Slovakia
Media Education does not have a long tradition in the Slovak Republic. Although a team of experts of the State Pedagogical Institute has worked on the introduction of media education into the formal education system since 2003, the first widely noticeable and significant step in implementation in this area was the adoption of the Concept of Media Education in the SR in the context of lifelong learning by the Slovak Government in 2009. The concept was response to European Audiovisual Media Sevice Directive establishing the obligation for EU member states to submit regular reports on the level of media literacy in the country concerned.
The establishment of the IMEC – Centre of Media Literacy at the Faculty of Mass Media Communication in February 2011 was the response to the needs and goals of the concept. The centre became the coordinator of all educational, research, development and advisory activities in the area of media and information education in Slovakia.
As for the teacher´s training in media education the Faculty of Mass Media Communication in Trnava was awarded in 2010 the accreditation for the educational program of continuous education for teachers called „Qualification study of Media Education school subject for secondary school teachers“ and in 2012 another accreditation was issued for a new study program called „Applied Media Studies“. As a part of these projects the university also prepared curriculum, training modules, methodologies, courses syllabi and other teaching documents and materials.
Several initiatives have been carried out recently with the aim to implement the best media literacy practices into the educationlal guidelines in addition to curricular and learning materials. Despite this, media education in Slovakia still functions only as a cross-curricular subject randomly incorporated into the teaching process at an both primary and secondary levels of schooling although being officially incorporated in educational curriculums as a compulsory component.
The establishment of the IMEC – Centre of Media Literacy at the Faculty of Mass Media Communication in February 2011 was the response to the needs and goals of the concept. The centre became the coordinator of all educational, research, development and advisory activities in the area of media and information education in Slovakia.
As for the teacher´s training in media education the Faculty of Mass Media Communication in Trnava was awarded in 2010 the accreditation for the educational program of continuous education for teachers called „Qualification study of Media Education school subject for secondary school teachers“ and in 2012 another accreditation was issued for a new study program called „Applied Media Studies“. As a part of these projects the university also prepared curriculum, training modules, methodologies, courses syllabi and other teaching documents and materials.
Several initiatives have been carried out recently with the aim to implement the best media literacy practices into the educationlal guidelines in addition to curricular and learning materials. Despite this, media education in Slovakia still functions only as a cross-curricular subject randomly incorporated into the teaching process at an both primary and secondary levels of schooling although being officially incorporated in educational curriculums as a compulsory component.
Portugal
As far the Portuguese education system is concerned, Media Education has a very discrete presence in the curriculum.
In the past, media education, among many other areas within its scope, was mainly taught in citizenship classes, much due to the collaboration from private and civil society projects. However, as education for citizenship is not seen as a priority by the Ministry of Education, such as Mathematics and Portuguese Language, it stopped being an independent subject of compulsory education. Therefore, Media Education ended up being only linked to ICT, an important subject and a skill to be acquired by all students. Apart from being a core subject for the 7th, 8th, 9th years, ICT was also present in the national curriculum as a basic cross-curricular subject, related to general skills, specific methodologies and acquiring general and specific competences. Moreover, the main governmental projects/programmes in this area were mainly connected to the perspective of the educational technology, to learning with the media and through the media, rather than about the media. The Portuguese education system was consequently far from meeting the goals of media education as a «set of procedures, contents and initiatives intending to promote the ability to conscious active and creative use and critical understanding of information and media». As a result, in April 2014, ML Guidelines for several levels of education were introduced by the Ministry of Education in collaboration with the University of Minho. Although now there is a framework of reference available, it is not yet taught as an independent subject in its own right; it is a transversal competence integrated into the teaching of other subjects, being therefore deprived of its own focus and losing its priority concerning its contents.
In short, despite the positive evolution regarding the implementation of Media Education in Portuguese schools in the last few years, it stills depends on the goodwill of teachers and on a few projects developed by entities and social actors that can deliver media education.
In the past, media education, among many other areas within its scope, was mainly taught in citizenship classes, much due to the collaboration from private and civil society projects. However, as education for citizenship is not seen as a priority by the Ministry of Education, such as Mathematics and Portuguese Language, it stopped being an independent subject of compulsory education. Therefore, Media Education ended up being only linked to ICT, an important subject and a skill to be acquired by all students. Apart from being a core subject for the 7th, 8th, 9th years, ICT was also present in the national curriculum as a basic cross-curricular subject, related to general skills, specific methodologies and acquiring general and specific competences. Moreover, the main governmental projects/programmes in this area were mainly connected to the perspective of the educational technology, to learning with the media and through the media, rather than about the media. The Portuguese education system was consequently far from meeting the goals of media education as a «set of procedures, contents and initiatives intending to promote the ability to conscious active and creative use and critical understanding of information and media». As a result, in April 2014, ML Guidelines for several levels of education were introduced by the Ministry of Education in collaboration with the University of Minho. Although now there is a framework of reference available, it is not yet taught as an independent subject in its own right; it is a transversal competence integrated into the teaching of other subjects, being therefore deprived of its own focus and losing its priority concerning its contents.
In short, despite the positive evolution regarding the implementation of Media Education in Portuguese schools in the last few years, it stills depends on the goodwill of teachers and on a few projects developed by entities and social actors that can deliver media education.
GREECE
Small but steady and positive steps onwards have been taken to the right direction in the Greek educational system as far as the Media Education is concerned. Still taking and applying such policy measurements to enable students to face the rapidly changing mediatized world and train the teachers for such classes, remains an ambitious goal.
The findings of the “EU Study on Assessment Criteria for Media Literacy Levels” (2009) in which Greece among other European countries took part, were rather disappointing, since there were found neither any mechanisms existing to “measure” the media education policies nor any kind of systematic annual state reports or statistics regarding target-groups or content and context.
When mass media came into the education context, the Greek educational system conservative and teacher centred as it was, gradually rejected it, since it demanded students’ fully engagement and interaction, elements being totally opposed to the conservative and teacher centred type of the education system existing. It was in the 00s, when the situation got better with the school system adopting media education in the curriculum, not in a systematic approach though.
The first report on media literacy education in school curriculum is found in 1989, when media education was partly introduced as a long chapter on media and information lessons in a Greek language textbook. The next step forward was made in 1992 when ICT courses were integrated in the secondary education yet far away from shaping responsible consumer-citizens.
In 1993 the Hellenic Audiovisual Institute (IOM) established and supervised by the public service broadcaster ERT and later by the Ministry of Press, was appointed as the national representative for media literacy policy and made a quite systematic approach. The contribution of this institute was exceptional in 2 ways:
1. As a research organization, it conducted the first research on media literacy in formal educational environment at national level, at preschool and primary-level education though, addressed to educators and consultants.
2. It served as a tank “beau ideal” on media literacy. http://www.iom.gr/default.aspx?lang=en-US&page=135
After its abolishment in 2011 due to the national crisis and merge with the public service broadcaster ERT, which was also abolished in June 2013, no other public media stakeholder has been established by the Greek government, thus consisting a serious impediment to media education policy for Greece. Hopefully the new public service broadcaster, NERIT, dating from June 2014, seems to be willing to keep contributing to media literacy agenda.
Today only the Hellenic Ministry of Education Ministry of Culture, Education and Religious Affairs (and the Educational Radio-television and other academic institutions assigned by it) is entitled to officially report on media education policy to the State.
At the same time the White Paper Report from the Media Department of University of Athens (2012) underlines that, teachers still do not feel like moving away from traditional teaching practices, due to lack of training on the specific field. Teachers are already aware of their part of responsibility in making young people ready for the real world and employment full of media, but they also know their limited capacity into doing so, thus feel insecure to proceed into fully integrating it into their classrooms.
Nowadays Media Education is integrated in the Greek national curriculum in both Primary and Secondary Education as a cross-curricular under the Environmental, Health Education, Politics and Law Studies, Social and Civic and as an optional module under Visual Arts Zone also including Music, Visual Arts, Drama, Dancing -Movement and Audiovisual Expression, rather inadequate for media education real purposes.
Moreover “research projects” have been integrated in the curriculum of Upper Secondary Education and educators of several disciplines have been trained on the methodology and some relevant tools by the “Institute of Educational Policy” (IEP), but still this partly covers the real concept of Media Education.
Besides within the Digital School framework, (component of the New School vision) there are a number of actions being implemented, in an effort to combine media and digital literacy; even so it seems that audiovisual literacy is approached in an aesthetic and cultural rather than in-depth aspect.
Apparently a core course does not exist by itself at the moment; that presence is not holistic nor systematic and certainly needs further development in order to get tuned with the global media education scene and the new trends that are emerging (eg. critical media literacy, digital literacy).
http://milunesco.unaoc.org/introducing-media-literacy-in-greek-schools-a-hurdle-race
As far as the in-service teacher training is concerned regarding the media education the big step forward is the “ICT in education” B level, within the Digital School framework, aiming at preparing teachers of primary and secondary schools for the current and future challenges. Still this is not enough as far as Media Education is concerned; hopefully there are school teachers who wish not only to work with, but also teach about the media in the classroom and no matter if they have been selected to attend the training courses or not, they seek for ways to get professionally developed and updated to current trends and thus have developed educational material by themselves.
The findings of the “EU Study on Assessment Criteria for Media Literacy Levels” (2009) in which Greece among other European countries took part, were rather disappointing, since there were found neither any mechanisms existing to “measure” the media education policies nor any kind of systematic annual state reports or statistics regarding target-groups or content and context.
When mass media came into the education context, the Greek educational system conservative and teacher centred as it was, gradually rejected it, since it demanded students’ fully engagement and interaction, elements being totally opposed to the conservative and teacher centred type of the education system existing. It was in the 00s, when the situation got better with the school system adopting media education in the curriculum, not in a systematic approach though.
The first report on media literacy education in school curriculum is found in 1989, when media education was partly introduced as a long chapter on media and information lessons in a Greek language textbook. The next step forward was made in 1992 when ICT courses were integrated in the secondary education yet far away from shaping responsible consumer-citizens.
In 1993 the Hellenic Audiovisual Institute (IOM) established and supervised by the public service broadcaster ERT and later by the Ministry of Press, was appointed as the national representative for media literacy policy and made a quite systematic approach. The contribution of this institute was exceptional in 2 ways:
1. As a research organization, it conducted the first research on media literacy in formal educational environment at national level, at preschool and primary-level education though, addressed to educators and consultants.
2. It served as a tank “beau ideal” on media literacy. http://www.iom.gr/default.aspx?lang=en-US&page=135
After its abolishment in 2011 due to the national crisis and merge with the public service broadcaster ERT, which was also abolished in June 2013, no other public media stakeholder has been established by the Greek government, thus consisting a serious impediment to media education policy for Greece. Hopefully the new public service broadcaster, NERIT, dating from June 2014, seems to be willing to keep contributing to media literacy agenda.
Today only the Hellenic Ministry of Education Ministry of Culture, Education and Religious Affairs (and the Educational Radio-television and other academic institutions assigned by it) is entitled to officially report on media education policy to the State.
At the same time the White Paper Report from the Media Department of University of Athens (2012) underlines that, teachers still do not feel like moving away from traditional teaching practices, due to lack of training on the specific field. Teachers are already aware of their part of responsibility in making young people ready for the real world and employment full of media, but they also know their limited capacity into doing so, thus feel insecure to proceed into fully integrating it into their classrooms.
Nowadays Media Education is integrated in the Greek national curriculum in both Primary and Secondary Education as a cross-curricular under the Environmental, Health Education, Politics and Law Studies, Social and Civic and as an optional module under Visual Arts Zone also including Music, Visual Arts, Drama, Dancing -Movement and Audiovisual Expression, rather inadequate for media education real purposes.
Moreover “research projects” have been integrated in the curriculum of Upper Secondary Education and educators of several disciplines have been trained on the methodology and some relevant tools by the “Institute of Educational Policy” (IEP), but still this partly covers the real concept of Media Education.
Besides within the Digital School framework, (component of the New School vision) there are a number of actions being implemented, in an effort to combine media and digital literacy; even so it seems that audiovisual literacy is approached in an aesthetic and cultural rather than in-depth aspect.
Apparently a core course does not exist by itself at the moment; that presence is not holistic nor systematic and certainly needs further development in order to get tuned with the global media education scene and the new trends that are emerging (eg. critical media literacy, digital literacy).
http://milunesco.unaoc.org/introducing-media-literacy-in-greek-schools-a-hurdle-race
As far as the in-service teacher training is concerned regarding the media education the big step forward is the “ICT in education” B level, within the Digital School framework, aiming at preparing teachers of primary and secondary schools for the current and future challenges. Still this is not enough as far as Media Education is concerned; hopefully there are school teachers who wish not only to work with, but also teach about the media in the classroom and no matter if they have been selected to attend the training courses or not, they seek for ways to get professionally developed and updated to current trends and thus have developed educational material by themselves.
ITALY
Although Media Education has not had a long tradition in Italy, however the National Plans for a Digital Education have been running for more than seven years with a remarkable input during the years 2012-2013. It is a big challenge that should obtain different teaching methods and new learning paths.
First the Ministry of Education, along with the Local School Districts, supported big budgets in order to provide schools with hardware equipment and software programs to be used both by teachers and students. Now one of the main goal is acquiring new skills according to the Digital Agenda for Europe.
The General Plan is divided into different projects and, in particular, some schools promote Media Education learning paths where the medium is not only a communication tool, but the way in which information is conveyed to the target/audience. Students are asked to develop a critical understanding and awareness of the media language, and of different ways media communicate a message. These education venues underline how often media may be subjected to pressure coming from political, social and economic entities.
Anyway, Media education in Italy still works as a cross-curricular subject , even if in some courses there are other subjects linked with Communication Sciences.
First the Ministry of Education, along with the Local School Districts, supported big budgets in order to provide schools with hardware equipment and software programs to be used both by teachers and students. Now one of the main goal is acquiring new skills according to the Digital Agenda for Europe.
The General Plan is divided into different projects and, in particular, some schools promote Media Education learning paths where the medium is not only a communication tool, but the way in which information is conveyed to the target/audience. Students are asked to develop a critical understanding and awareness of the media language, and of different ways media communicate a message. These education venues underline how often media may be subjected to pressure coming from political, social and economic entities.
Anyway, Media education in Italy still works as a cross-curricular subject , even if in some courses there are other subjects linked with Communication Sciences.
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