This blog has moved to……

 

……. www.beyondproject.wordpress.com

Over there you will find all of the posts from here, and more.

I may bring back this CMSW blog at some point, but with multiple writers and not only me.  Until then, please visit the Beyond Project: Community Media notebook blog.  Be great to have your comments.

Many thanks, all the best and see you around!

Shawn

The multiple faces of Media Literacy

I attended the informative “Your Media, Your Tools” dissemination event at Leicester’s De Montfort University run by the Community Media Association (CMA) last Friday. It included a presentation by Ofcom talking about their media literacy agenda, as well as radio and video groups from across the UK showcasing the results of their involvement in CMA’s media literacy project.

It has always struck me just how slippery the term ‘media literacy’ is, with a different emphasis depending on the agenda of the person talking about it. I used to get frustrated by what I saw as a watering down of the notion, wanting the literacy aspect to acknowledged as the critical pedagogy that resides in community media activity, and that was me wearing my personal agenda on my sleeve. I now feel however it would be more useful to slow my judgement and analyse each different face of media literacy in its own right, as each interpretation of the term contains pragmatic, theoretical and/or ideological meaning for each different type of user, so that is worth looking at without undue dismissal.

In future articles I will be exploring the idea of media literacy in the nine predominant guises that I have seen it discussed within the community media sector, media education events, published research and academia. As with all identities of phenomena there is some overlap different contexts, though they will be analysed from the perspective of emphasis, and therefore argue that the identities described here are valid. Notions described in the future will be:

–  Media Literacy as media savvy
–  Media Literacy as semiotics
–  Media Literacy as creative activism
–  Media Literacy as cross-curricula engagement
–  Media Literacy as IT support
–  Media Literacy as media sector training
–  Media Literacy as process
–  Media Literacy as informed media consumption and media use

Interestingly, given this fractious identity, the actual definition of media literacy itself is, with slight variations, mostly settled in a broad consensus without too much debate. It is the interpretation of the accepted definition which is the cause of the majority of debate. Even though there is not one single definition, in loose terms it is widely acknowledged as being about;

– the right to have access to media platforms & tools;
– the need for people to be empowered to understand the media and its ever changing nuances;
– the ability to create media communications if so desired.

Some example of this are;

Ofcom’s definition is; “the ability to access, understand and create communications in a variety of contexts.” They acknowlegde they are mostly concerned with media literacy as applied to digital technology and that people should be able to use the equipment to get the most out of it. (Media Literacy as Media Savvy / Media Literacy as IT support).

According to The Media Literacy Task Force:
“If people are to participate fully at work or in their community, or communicate effectively with family, friends and colleagues globally, or consume media intelligently they need to be media savvy. They need to understand how media works and to feel comfortable questioning what they watch and read. They need a sense of who knows or owns what, and to what extent what you see is really what you get. And, very importantly, they need to become confident in using and exploiting the possibilities of new devices and media channels.”
(Media Literacy as Media Savvy / Media Literacy as informed media consumption and media use / Media Literacy as semiotics / Media Literacy as IT support)

The Center for Media Literacy‘s view is: the ability to communicate competently in all media forms as well as to access, understand, analyze, evaluate and participate with powerful images, words and sounds that make up our contemporary mass media culture. Indeed, we believe these skills of media literacy are essential for both children and adults as individuals and as citizens of a democratic society.
(Media Literacy as Media Savvy / Media Literacy as creative activism / Media Literacy as process)

At some point in the not-to-distant future I will expand on these ideas in a case by case basis in future blog articles, and also write this up as a full academic referenced paper.

Until then, thanks for popping by. Comments always welcome.

Shawn

THE CLASS: Teacher/Student relationships, and systems as oppression in schools

An analysis of the film ‘The Class’, from the perspective of critical pedagogy.  I will be extending this article into a chapter for my PhD, where I will use data from interviews I conducted with participants of community media education activity to explore the notion of critical pedagogy further within this context.  But for now, I hope you find this blog article interest.

(SPOILER ALERT!  This article reveals certain aspects of the plot of the film.  You have been warned.)

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The film ‘The Class’, in a challenging way depicts a term in an urban French school, centred predominantly around the dynamics in the classroom of François Marlin the French teacher. The entire film balances on the power relations between the teacher and his students, and the tensions that surface when the power balance shifts in either direction. The line is blurred between what either side constitutes acceptable and respectful behaviour, with peer allegiances made at crucial moments when clear lines are drawn.

 

At moments there is a seemingly equal dialogue between teacher and students. Diversions in planned lessons evolve when the students start to question assumed knowledge, accepted traditions and the ‘top down’ curriculum, and these debates are met with the teacher engaging in the dialogue and recognising the validity of some of the students points, even if this is reluctant concession. The students are uninhibited to apply reason to question hierarchies of cultural authority, such as the text book correct use of language, rightly arguing that no one actually uses such antiquated speech patterns in day to day life, and challenge the teacher to justify why they are being taught it. At moments such as these the teacher goes some way to defend the curriculum and cultural tradition, before meeting them half way to generally agree with them, but stating that they have to learn it anyway. This balance of rational cultural debate and its effect on the institutional entropy of the school threads throughout the film, with stark negotiations laid bare on how systems are maintained, what happens when systems falter, and how they are attempted to be patched up and repaired in the aftermath.

 

It is the moments when reasoned debate breaks down and descends into emotional protectionism that creates a chain of events that leads to the main areas of dramatic tension in the film, which mostly centre around the strained relationship between François and Souleymane, a student with a bad reputation across the entire school. When Souleymane is teased by a female student (Esmerelda) when he refuses to do the work set by the teacher, Souleymane responds with a verbal assault that results in the teacher throwing him out of the class. This event happens not long after Souleymane had shown surprising interest in a self portrait project where he used photography after he had refused to write with stubborn reluctance. François embraced the student’s approach and pinned the work on the wall for the whole class to see. The look of embarrassed and fragile pride on Souleymane’s face was unmistakable.

 

In a subsequent staff meeting, after Souleymane was ejected from the class, François at first tries to defend the student, but in the wave of public opinion amongst his peers he descends into conceding that he believes Souleymane has reached his academic limit and suggests there is no hope for him, failing to mention the promise he had shown in the self portrait project as even a glimmer of the student’s potential and a way to harness his interest. This denunciation of Souleymane is witnessed by Esmerelda, a student representative present in the meeting. Despite being enemies with Souleymane she tells him the happenings of the meeting demonstrating a solidarity of identity across institutional and cultural lines. The pain on François’s face is clear when he seals Souleymane’s fate with permanent exclusion, but he goes with crowd opinion in spite of personal feeling.

 

When confronted by this back in the classroom by Souleymane himself, François tries to divert the argument away from his own guilt to accuse the motives of the student reps for divulging the information, resulting in him insulting them in a verbal slur arguably more shocking than Souleymane had done earlier, which led to him being ejected. Now faced with the knowledge that his teacher sees no hope in him, Souleymane’s reckless attempt at defending his own integrity and arguing against the teacher’s verbal assault on Esmerelda sees him create a situation where again there is no choice but for François to eject him again. In terms of the institutional line, this becomes the point of no return.

 

For Paulo Freire (1972) it would be too easy to suggest that Souleymane is the sole oppressed individual in this situation. The entwined state of teacher institutional compliance and lack of student power or agency is described by Freire as the oppression they both share working/studying in the education system, which he describes as a “state of oppression that gratifies the oppressors.” (page 17). According to Freire, for the teacher to discover “himself to be an oppressor may cause considerable anguish, but it does not necessarily lead to solidarity with the oppressed [the student]. Rationalizing his guilt through paternalistic treatment of the oppressed, all the while holding them fast in a position of dependence, will not do. Solidarity requires that one enter into the situation of those with whom one is identifying; it is a radical posture.” (page 26).

 

The banter François enjoys with the class in the early lessons is just that, a mere exchange of words and ideas that have no actually bearing on the power structures in the wider system. Like Johan Huizinga’s theory of the ‘magical circle’, which he describes as the boundaries of the rules of engagement when people play (1938), the classroom discussions were within the confines of the magic circle, where the dialogue appears to be democratic, but when the circle is broken the teacher is still dominant and the students passive and the system remains, swiftly repaired with the cultural patches of expectation and hierarchy. Throughout the film the boundaries of the magic circle are being tested, pushed and expanded, but ultimately nothing changes. Souleymane is never mentioned again and the system rebuilds its’ previous patterns of narrative like a well trodden tiled kitchen floor. The pattern doesn’t quite fit and something is not quite right, but it is still fully functional as a working floor, and will always remain so.

 

The banter in the early lessons felt like a critical pedagogy where the students were questioning authority, where the teacher was slowly but surely coming on board with a “radical posture”, but that was just a smoke illusion. The weight of the institutional system remained the dominant paradigm through the existence of the ‘hidden curriculum’, described as the “set of values, attitudes [and] knowledge frames, which are embodied in the organisation and processes of schooling and which are implicitly conveyed to pupils.” (Jary 2005, page 267). The hidden curriculum is considered to be more powerful than the actual content of subjects taught in school, and “promotes social control and an acceptance of the school’s, and hence society’s, authority structure.” The national curriculum teaches students about literacy, numeracy and science, etc, but the hidden curriculum instils in students the importance of listening to elders, of obeying orders, of respecting authority, and of the values of manners and the need to work within existing systems in society.  Actions that are contrary to the dominant norms of the hidden curriculum are considered renegade, dangerous and subversive. Such behaviour must be either contained and controlled, like François, or eradicated from the (micro) system, like Souleymane.

 

As a community media facilitator working in both formal and informal education settings, for me the departure point for Souleymane’s future narrative is in relation to harnessing his interest in photography, and seeing where that can lead. The oppression in François manifested itself in him not being prepared to recognise or follow the spark of Souleymane’s interest as a possible route to the student’s future success. Education without hope is fostering a slave dependence. On Freire’s position on this, according to Kincheloe (2008);

“human beings can become so much more than they are now, Freire always maintained, in the spirit of this critical hope. Oppression, he understood, always reduces the oppressed understanding of historical time to a hopeless present. We are all oppressed from time to time by this hopeless presentism that tells us time and time again: ‘things will never change.’ Throughout history these hopeless moments have been followed by radical changes. Such a ‘long view’ is, of course, hard to discern in the black hole of despair. Freire’s historical hope was paralleled by a pedagogical hope shared between teachers and students.” (page 72)

 

Freire’s ‘critical pedagogy’, where the educational institution hierarchy is flattened to a plateau, where the teachers are ‘teacher-students’ and the students are ‘student-teachers’, and where both are made aware of their own oppression, presents an additional challenge to community media, more than merely working with a glimpse of a student’s creative potential. What must also crucially be considered is what type of community media intervention would it be?  Would it be; (1.) one that works with the existing system as a different pedagogical model to keep students such as Souleymane engaged in the school process, working within the paradigm of the hidden curriculum, or (2.), a more radical application of community media processes working in an informal setting, which is actively positioning education as a political activity, using photography and media as the tools of self-empowerment and social agency? Both these options are followed by the additional question, “Does it actually matter, as long as the student is set on a constructive path with a non-self-destructive future?”

 

I’ll leave this question hanging, just as the film left the audience, with the scene of the empty classroom. Full of possibilities, full of hope and idealism, but also full of tension and frustration. If there is anything that this film teaches me, it is that educators must hold onto the possibilities of hope and idealism, and use the tension and frustration to fuel and stimulate challenging and non-patronising learning experiences. That is one step towards the teacher-student / student-teacher relationship, where both are forced to think for themselves and question themselves, before they attempt to think for and question other people.

 

References

– Freire, P. (1972), Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Penguin Books, UK

– Huizinga, J. H. (1938), Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture, Beacon Press

– Jary, J, and Jary, D (2005), Sociology Defined and Explained, HarperCollins, Glasgow, UK

– Kincheloe, J.L, (2008), Critical pedagogy primer – Second Edition, Peter Lang Publishing, New York

 

(c) 2009 – Shawn Sobers – Firstborn Creatives / University of the West of England

Leaving Footprints in Books

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Found an interesting post at the Daily Poetics blog, all about the debate about whether or not to write in books.  He calls people who hate the idea “Preservationists”, and people who defend writing in books “Footprint Leavers”.

I’m definitely a Footprint Leaver in my non-fiction books, and don’t feel guilty about it at all.  I only do it to books I own personally and not in library books or those I borrow from friends.  This is why I rarely borrow or loan books, and why I spend far too much money at Amazon!

Non-fiction books are classrooms in the hands, and can also be learning diaries when you write in the margins.  I underline sentences, but write next to them as well, much more useful than only underlining.

I have no problem with re-reading books I have written in long ago.  It’s easy to ignore my scribbles and lines and think about the text again in a fresh way.  But it is also useful to build on thoughts I had years ago and make lateral connections between my old and present self that would otherwise have been left unseen.  To inherit a book from a loved one with writing in the margins is a blessing, as it brings you closer to the previous owner, who has now gone.

As for writing in books lowering the value of them.  So what?!  I think buying a book to not read, but only to sell, is more sacrilegious than buying a book to devour and learn from.  Acquiring art and knowledge to treat merely as a commodity is an affront to learning to transform the world to the betterment of others, and not just to boost our own bank accounts.

Academic Blogging Workshop

In the morning I’m giving a working about my experiences of academic blogging at UWE.

I’ve found, since I started a blog in 2006, that even though I haven’t kept it up religiously, on the whole it has been useful.

In part an on-line note book, and in other ways a place to journalistically (or scholarly) respond to current events, a blog forces you to have an opinion, and to put your head above the parapet to stand by your convictions.

Things to remember to mention;

– Anon or not?

– Dynamic media note book

– Lateral references to core subject (can be looser than core research question)

– Personal archive of ideas and references

– The ‘cultural practice’ of blogging (discipline & confidence)

– Confidence to “publicly” play with ideas

– Precious with sharing data observations (danger of….??)

– research content to research process to field of interest ((((and possibly to personal day to day stuff?? – it’s ALL connected to YOU!!))))

– To be worried, or not be worried about “audience”. (About if any audience at all, and if that should affect style of writing!!)

Latest Ofcom Media Literacy Audits

Ofcom today published its second audit of adult and children’s Media Literacy in the UK.

The Media Literacy Audits are part of a wide programme of Ofcom research into Media Literacy in the UK. They provide a base of evidence to develop new policies and initiatives to help citizens and consumers access and use digital media services and technologies.

The full news release can be found here:
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/media/news/2008/05/nr_20080516

The Adults’ Media Literacy audit can be found here:
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/advice/media_literacy/medlitpub/medlitpubrss/ml_adult08/

The Children’s Media Literacy audit can be found here:
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/advice/media_literacy/medlitpub/medlitpubrss/ml_childrens08/

Sir Ken Robinson – Do schools today kill creativity?

Street-Level Youth Media – Chicago

Interesting videos on a community media organisation from Chicago.

What is Street-Level Youth Media?

CMW INTERVIEW – PART ONE

CMW INTERVIEW – PART THREE (couldn’t find part 2)

TV Digital Switchover – DCMS Response

Yesterday morning I received a reply from my local MP regarding a campaign to get MP’s to sign the early day motion on ring-fencing a channel on Freeview for local/community programming, anticipating the digital switch over.

With her response she enclosed a letter from the DCMS regarding my request. I don’t know if the DCMS letter is a standard one that they send out to everyone. It’s one and a half sides of A4, but the last paragraph sums it up totally.

“In their report on Public Service Content, published on 15 November, the Culture, Media and Sports Select Committee said that while they see some value in local content, they are not convinced of the need to intervene to support local TV, particularly by giving away spectrum for broadcasting on digital terrestrial television. I hope this information is useful to you. Best Wishes, Andy Burnham”

I found it perversely reassuring to see the battle lines so clearly laid out in black & white.   Thanks a bunch Andy for making that so clear.

Basically what the DCMS are saying is that a community tv station will have to bid for a channel alongside other commercial bidders such as shopping channels and music stations.  When the digital switchover happens local programming will pretty much disappear, except maybe for news.  BBC, ITV, C4 and C5 are already saying that come the switch over they will be an unfair disadvantage as none of the other digital channel have to have a public service remit.  ITV are already backing away from confirming they will continue their public service agenda.  Without the DCMS and Ofcom supporting community and local programming by ringfencing a channel on Freeview, the fight for community television broadcasting will be over.  Costs to run a digital channel are hugely expensive and competing against commercial stations will be near impossible.  The Community Channel would be the obvious answer, but unfortunately that channel is a huge missed opportunity and nothing but an advert channel for charities. 

The DCMS and Ofcom are saying that the future of local and community programming lies in broadband, which is unfortunately missing the point as for much of the target audience for local community programming, (i.e. the elderly, those disenfranchised, etc), many will be on the wrong side of the digital divide, and won’t have computers let alone broadband access at home.

If you are passionate about the future of local and community television then visit the campaign at the Community Media Association (CMA) and ask you local MP to sign the early days motion.  Full text for communication to your MP can be found at the site.

http://www.commedia.org.uk/policy-and-campaigns/take-action/edm-1013-local-public-service-television/

Shawn

IPPR report – Behind the Screen: The hidden life of youth online

Last July a group of us met with Kay Withers from the IPPR (Institutefor Public Policy Research) at Watershed, Bristol to feed into a reportshe was writing. We discussed how young people use digital media and thefunding that is available for community media organisations working withyoung people.

The report has now been published – it’s called “Behind the Screen: The hidden life of youth online”.

Here’s a link to it:
http://www.ippr.org/publicationsandreports/publication.asp?id=597

(You don’t have to register to download the report.)

We are mentioned on page 56.

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It is great this report has been published. It says a lot of important things about our area of work and will be a useful reference. One point I feel it missed though is its assessment of the ‘youth led’ agenda. Encouragingly the report acknowledged that there’s a flaw in such funding schemes as they don’t accurately reflect the need for young people’s groups to have adult input for expertise and support.

What the report stopped short of saying however, was that such funding schemes are actually (knowingly or unknowingly) designed to undermine the same support and infrastructure that nurtured the groups of confident self-determinant young people in the first place. Akin to telling school students that if they pass their GCSEs, that they will be given funds to set up their own sixth form colleges – without any input from the schools they came from, or of any acknowledgment of the roles the schools played.

I think it’s good that funding sources are putting the wants of the young people before the notional whims of the adults, that absolutely fine, but for the projects to be robust, ‘honest’ and longlasting, funders shouldn’t just dangle money with principled caveats, but rather work harder to actually build relationships between organisations and young people, in the equally principled desire to build sustainability for the young people and the people who try to support them.

Obviously all my own humble opinion of course. Feel free to disagree! LOL