Media Education as Cross-curricular Theme in Estonian Schools: Reasons of a Failure

• Main Author: Kadri Ugur
• Format: Article
• Language: Bulgarian
• Published: South-West University "Neofit Rilski", Department of Sociology, Academic seminar "Media and Education" 2011-12-01
• Series: Проблеми на постмодерността
• Subjects: media literacy; media education; national curricula
• Online Access: https://pmpjournal.org/index.php/pmp/article/view/149

Estonian schools have some experiences with teaching production of written megia genres, but very limited understanding of what actually is media literacy. Although since 2002 Media education has been a cross-curricular theme in Estonian national curricula, there has been no constructive development towards understanding media literacy. I suggest that the reasons of current situation are following: - Teachers have no cognitive model of media literacy, and therefore they tend to see media education as extra load; - Curricula are overloaded and assessment is oriented on factual knowledge, not on critical reading skills; - Teachers do not have skills of critical reading, nor the methodology to teach critical reading; - Media literacy is narrowly understood as producing news stories or as ability to use internet; - School culture does not support cooperation of teachers - Generation gaps (teachers of different age, teachers and pupils) in the field of media usage is huge; different generations live in different media environment. I suggest that one of the ways for the effective improvement is to overview the teacher's pre-service programs from the point of view of media literacy, and actively increase the elements of critical media usage and integrating different subjects.