Introduction
The NATE website for ITE covers a range of topics that arrive
in the English Initial teacher education programme, including
media.
http://www.ite.org.uk/ite_topics/media/001.html
Burn’s pages detail an introductory curriculum view
of media in English covering areas such as:
- Key Concepts
- Key Issues
- Key Debates
- Production
- Possible approaches
- Research and Reading
This site details the background to media education and cross-references
concepts for learning with debates about media education.
But there are whole new areas of curriculum overlap and thinking
with respect to the national curriculum for 2008, A big picture
of the curriculum which alludes to cross-curricula learning
and learning that takes place beyond the subject area.
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The bigger picture of
the curriculum 2008
All trainees on ITT courses need to be introduced to the curriculum
and frameworks. In 2008, the launch of the new National Curriculum
provides some very good training opportunities to explore the
relationship between the taught curriculum and contemporary
society.
A Bigger Picture is a colour-coded copy of the National Curriculum
and can be downloaded from the QCA website. As represented on
one sheet of paper, there are some relatively easy inroads to
where education may be heading.
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Suggested questions for exploring the big picture
Drawing on QCA’s own thinking, trainees can begin to discuss
the curriculum through these kinds of questions:
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What does a successful learner in the 21st
century look like? |
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How might this be different from your own learning? |
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Are there new skills? |
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Are there new attributes? |
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What can learners already do? What do they know? What
will an education add to learners’ knowledge? |
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School a key place for learning but not the only place? |
In advance of looking at the aims of A Big Picture of the
Curriculum, have trainees reflect on their allegiances to
their subject:
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Discuss: whether you conceive of your subject
area as a ‘body of knowledge’ or a ‘set
of flexible skills?’ |
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Discuss with someone from another subject area your
view of each other’s subject – what’s
the purpose/value/worth/point of studying your subject? |
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What will be learned? |
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How does the learning in your subject area prepare
pupils for the life in the 21st Century? |
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Will all pupils receive the same learning in your subject? |
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Should they? |
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What variations are necessary? |
Introducing trainees further to the rationale behind Curriculum,
2008 Mick Waters, QCA, 2007 argued that the new curriculum is
“a political shift necessary to catch up with a social
shift”. This shift, Waters argued should acknowledge three
central changes:
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the role of Technology |
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Employment patterns |
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Communication/Media |
Trainees may then get an opportunity to look at the outline:
Questions you might ask:
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Where and how does the curriculum reference
study of the media? |
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What will be important for learners? |
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How will this be achieved in the organisation of study? |
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How does English sit with the statutory reference to
‘communication, language and literacy’ |
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Are your views of English and media changing now that
you see them conceived in this large curriculum picture?
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Multi-modality
and English
Theories of multiliteracies have developed out of research into
the modes of reading and writing undertaken by children. Here
the work of Knobel and Lankshear (2003), Kress (2003) or Marsh
(2003) draw attention to the different ways of understanding
language in relation to other presentational features of texts
including images, pictures, fonts etc; Theories of multiliteracies
put technological changes and audience interactions with texts
at the forefront of thinking about what literacy might mean.
It is testimony to the authority of some of this theoretical
work that multimodal is now a word that is clearly fixed to
reading and writing descriptors in the national curriculum for
English. Most of the activities described below are designed
to have English trainees know the curriculum and framework (Q14,
Q15) and to think about multimodality as part of their everyday
practice as English teachers and in doing so this makes their
understanding of media learning opportunities more explicit.
Exploring the 4 Cs – Competence, Creativity, Cultural
Understanding, Critical understanding
Task: Looking at the programmes of study in
English www.qca.org.uk/curriculum
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Examine the ways the 4 Cs are described
and explained. |
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Where might media study sit? |
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Where are there explicit references to the study of
media? |
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Do you think media education activities could come under
any of the other headings?
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Looking Further at English Processes
Taking the list of Speaking and listening capabilities from
the curriculum – match these to opportunities to use media
in their realisation:
e.g. Speaking and Listening
a.present information and points of view clearly and appropriately
in different contexts, adapting talk for a range of purposes
and audiences including the more formal
Pupils to create a news feature describing the loss of youth
club facilities in the area. Feature must collect a range of
viewpoints from interested parties and programme must make use
of formal language in the presentational elements to fit the
news format
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Reading
Interrogate some of the reading descriptors:
‘understand how meaning is created through the combination
of words, images and sounds in multimodal texts’.
Examine how the website for Shelter uses a range of different
resources to create meaning.
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Writing
‘how form, layout and presentation contribute to effect’
Creating leaflets, fanzines, newspaper articles, websites,
as well as moving image texts – sequencing, framing, speech
and sound.
Taking your knowledge of the English curriculum into school
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School Based Tasks
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What is your department’s position
on media and multimodality? |
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Are there any “experts”? |
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What pressures has the new call for multiliteracies
placed on the department’s knowledge? |
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What pressure does it place on your own – audit
your media knowledge. |
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Exploring Range
The NC for English does not prescribe texts
for the study of media as it does for literature. Instead the
advice is that schools
Choose texts that are informed by the cultural context of the
school and experiences of the pupils. It could include texts
that:
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Help pupils explore their sense of identity
and reflect on their own values, attitudes and assumption
about other people, times and places, either through continuity
or contrast with their own experiences |
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explore common experiences in different and unfamiliar
contexts (time, place, culture) |
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forms such as journalism, … and multimodal texts
including film
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Writing
The references to multimodality in writing programme are less
explicit. However, the guidance for thinking about contexts
for writing brings into view writing for newspapers, other print
media or the web which would include design features other than
the written word. Examining GCSE Paper 1 as a training activity
would show how the attention to multimodal reading and writing
opportunities would prepare candidates for analysing textual
content in addition to features of layout and design.
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Cross-reference NC references to the Secondary Framework
| 5.1 |
Developing and adapting active reading
skills and strategies |
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Understanding and responding to ideas, viewpoint, themes
and purposes in texts |
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Reading and engaging with a wide and varied range of
texts |
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Relating texts to the social, historical and cultural
contexts in which they were written |
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Analysing writers’ use of organisation, structure,
layout and presentation |
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Using and adapting the conventions and forms of texts
on paper and on screen |
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Structuring, organising and presenting texts in a variety
of forms on paper and on screen |
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Developing and using editing and proofreading skills
on paper and on screen |
English trainees will need to understand how
media enters the English curriculum and to begin to think about
planning work that extends pupils’ media literacy alongside
other literacies.
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