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Contexts, Practices and Pedagogies

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Digital Media in Education
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Abstract

Chapter 2 looks at how moving image work is positioned in relation to academic language, and unpacks the media learning landscape with insight from classical thinking on dualisms between the empirical and the mind. Discourses that function as barriers to media-making in schools are examined, such as the decline of arts and humanities subjects, and neoliberal instrumentality related to curriculum and assessment interventions. A view of literacy as a set of social practices, inclusive of the audiovisual, is presented as cycles of media crafting, critique and artistry. These facets of media education form a framework of five interdependent dimensions attending to the complexities of modern pedagogy in digital spaces and becoming a media literate practitioner in a networked society.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    STEM refers to the academic subjects Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths. Although a preferred acronym in some circles is STEAM, propelling the Arts back into the acceptable academic canon (Cultural Learning Alliance 2014; Maeda 2013; see also the EU funded Digital Learning Across Boundaries project—DLaB—whose aim is to promote digital learning in teacher education, curriculum subjects, languages and cultures, to facilitate collaborative learning and community approaches across national boundaries: http://dlaberasmus.eu/ [Accessed 7 January 2018].

  2. 2.

    This refers to British scientist, C. P. Snow’s Cambridge lecture in 1959 (see C. P. Snow 1961), whose polarising perspective lives on in Western discourse via the separation between science and the humanities. Snow’s thesis sought to favourably re-position science in intellectual circles.

  3. 3.

    See http://www.baccforthefuture.com/ [Accessed 6 March 2018]—a campaign to reform the EBacc and ‘save creativity in schools’.

  4. 4.

    The same industrial metaphor is used in NESTA’s Next Gen report (Livingstone and Hope 2011, p. 7) in relation to keeping the ‘talent pipeline’ flowing. In addition, NESTA’s Young Digital Makers report (Quinlan 2015), whilst being a comprehensive UK audit, seems in part, to have been conceived to address the perceived shortfall of technological skills.

  5. 5.

    It is also worth noting that the Maker Movement has been supported by the research wing of the American military (DARPA—Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), to the tune of over $13 million (Williamson 2014, p. 12), indicating alternative motives for its activities.

  6. 6.

    Starting in 2000, the OECD’s (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) survey tests over half a million fifteen-year-old students in ‘65 economies’ for their reading, maths and science ability and publishes the results globally. Although the tests offer interesting data on global numeracy and literacy ‘performance’, some question the extent to which educational policies are determined by its outcomes, considering the absence of contextual information and its contested methods of testing, data and comparison (Ball 2013, p. 38; Sellar et al. 2017).

  7. 7.

    See the 2007 New Zealand curriculum’s key competencies which are stipulated as both ends and means. Available from http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/Key-competencies [Accessed 6 March 2018].

  8. 8.

    The Finns produced a specific media education policy booklet: https://kavi.fi/sites/default/files/documents/mil_in_finland.pdf (KAVI 2013) [Accessed 22 May 2018] and further comment can be found in my MA Dissertation: https://fashioningandflow.wordpress.com/2011/11/09/international-perspective/ (Cannon 2011) [Accessed 6 March 2018].

  9. 9.

    From 2002–2011 the Creative Partnerships programme worked intensively with over 2700 schools across England, 90,000 teachers and over 1 million young people, building partnerships with creative workers, such as artists, scientists, architects, and cultural organisations, and generating numerous reports (Lord et al. 2007; Sefton-Green 2008).

  10. 10.

    ‘Web 2.0’ refers to the shift from user consumption of web content and directory searches (taxonomies) to user-generated content, tagging (folksonomies) and participatory practices, such as blogging and wiki development.

  11. 11.

    See https://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity?language=en [Accessed 6 March 2018].

  12. 12.

    The elements are: Cultural, Cognitive, Constructive, Communicative, Confident, Creative, Critical and Civic. They are cited here as a welcome counterpoint to what might be described as the imperative for students’ ‘Conservative Compliance’ with curriculum diktats.

  13. 13.

    So hostile to the digital arts is the current administration that the line ‘digital texts shall not be included’ features in the English GCSE specification. See page 4 here: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/206143/GCSE_English_Language_final.pdf [Accessed 6 March 2018].

  14. 14.

    See Bergala et al. 2016, p. 92, where, in the context of film production, and drawing on Marcel Duchamp, he names this important schism in mathematical terms, as ‘the personal art coefficient’.

  15. 15.

    Street (1984) introduced two models of literacy: the ‘autonomous’ and the ‘ideological’. The former remains relevant in schooled literacies of the moment and refers to the blanket teaching of decontextualised functional skills—such as phonic recognition—that are believed to be automatically empowering, ‘inevitably’ enhancing understanding and life chances. Whereas the ‘ideological’ model embodies a value system and is culturally sensitive to variable contexts. It takes into account the uses of multi-literacies and a large number of associated socio-economic factors.

  16. 16.

    The ‘Connected Learning’ programme is defined by three Learning Principles whereby activities are: (a) interest-powered, (b) academically-oriented and (c) peer-supported; and three Design Principles whereby curricula are: (a) openly-networked, (b) production-centred, and (c) involve shared purpose (Ito et al. 2013).

  17. 17.

    For clarity from here on, I refer to the American Professor, Alexander Reid, as A. Reid and Mark Reid at BFI Education simply as, Reid.

  18. 18.

    Burnett et al. (2012) introduce the concept of ‘(im)materiality’ in relation to digital meaning-making that may be helpful in this context. The term conveys: the recursive relationship between the physical and the representational; the importance of ‘siting’ in literacy practices as an ongoing fluid negotiation (p. 8); and the salience to literacy of human situatedness (p. 10)—all of which becomes significant in later discussions in Chap. 6 on spaces for the translation of meanings (see also Burnett 2011a).

  19. 19.

    I describe media production as ‘new’ with some hesitation, as it inadequately describes communicative tools and practices that have been quotidian for many for more than a decade; only in the sense that they are continually in renewal is the term useful.

  20. 20.

    There’s an allure to creating and citing lists, and media education specialists are not immune to their putative power to sum up and simplify. I include them here as I am struck by the accumulative potential of these capacities to improve the life chances of many young people.

  21. 21.

    The 3 C’s framework is deployed in ongoing EU-funded research into ways of supporting film literacy in various film education settings (FLAG 2013, 2015).

  22. 22.

    The phrase ‘ontological schizophrenia’ comes from Lanham (1994, p. 81) who uses it to describe the ironic tension between Plato’s ‘rant’ against writing as an expressive output, and—his prose output.

  23. 23.

    A network of educators, academics and youth workers in the US called the Connected Learning Alliance (2015), supported by public/private partnerships and the MacArthur Foundation, work with these very principles to create a network of ‘Cities of Learning’—“a world where all young people have access to participatory , interest-driven learning that connects to educational, civic, and career opportunities.” Available at: http://clalliance.org/why-connected-learning/ (Connected Learning Alliance 2015) [Accessed 7 February 2018] (see also, Ito et al. 2013).

  24. 24.

    Delors’ introduction to UNESCO’s ‘Learning—the treasure within’ (1996) is entitled ‘A necessary Utopia’ which he conceives as a vital imaginary “if we are to escape from a dangerous cycle sustained by cynicism or resignation” (1996, p. 20).

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Cannon, M. (2018). Contexts, Practices and Pedagogies. In: Digital Media in Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78304-8_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78304-8_2

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