18 Principles of Media Education

By Len Masterman

Len Masterman is one of the leading thinkers in the international media education movement and is well known to the readers of Mediacy. An interview that appeared in this publication last year has been extensively quoted in the Media Literacy Internet List-Serv.

Len's book, Teaching the Media (Comedia Books, 1985), is considered the definitive text on the subject for Secondary school teachers. His new book, Media Education in Europe in the 1990's is published by the Council of Europe Press.

Len prefers to use the term "media education" over "media literacy" and we have left the wording intact.

1. Media Education is a serious and significant endeavour. At stake in it is the empowerment of majorities and the strengthening of society's democratic structures.
2. The central unifying concept of Media Education is that of representation. The media mediate. They do not reflect reality but re-present it. The media, that is, are symbolic or sign systems. Without this principle no media education is possible. From it, all else flows.
3. Media Education is a lifelong process. High student motivation, therefore, must become a primary objective.
4. Media Education aims to foster not simply critical intelligence, but critical autonomy.
5. Media Education is investigative. It does not seek to impose specific cultural values.
6. Media Education is topical and opportunistic. It seeks to illuminate the life-situations of the learners. In doing so it may place the "here-and-now" in the context of wider historic and ideological issues.
7. Media Education's key concepts are analytical tools rather than an alternative content.
8. Content, in Media Education, is a means to an end. That end is the development of transferable analytical tools rather than an alternative content.
9. The effectiveness of Media Education can be evaluated by just two criteria:
• the ability of students to apply their critical thinking to new situations, and
• the amount of commitment and motivation displayed by students.
10. Ideally, evaluation in Media Education means student self-evaluation, both formative and summative.
11. Media Education attempts to change the relationship between teacher and taught by offering both objects for reflection and dialogue.
12. Media Education carries out its investigations via dialogue rather than discussion.
13. Media Education is essentially active and participatory, fostering the development of more open and democratic pedagogies. It encourages students to take more responsibility for and control over their own learning, to engage in joint planning of the syllabus, and to take longer- term perspectives on their own learning. In short, Media Education is as much about new ways of working as it is about the introduction of a new subject area.
14. Media Education involves collaborative learning. It is group focused. It assumes that individual learning is enhanced not through competition but through access to the insights and resources of the whole group.
15. Media Education consists of both practical criticism and critical practice. It affirms the primacy of cultural criticism over cultural reproduction.
16. Media Education is a holistic process. Ideally it means forging relationships with parents, media professionals and teacher-colleagues.
17. Media Education is committed to the principle of continuous change. It must develop in tandem with a continuously changing reality.
18. Underpinning Media Education is a distinctive epistemology. Existing knowledge is not simply transmitted by teachers or 'discovered" by students. It is not an end but a beginning. It is the subject of critical investigation and dialogue out of which new knowledge is actively created by students and teachers.

During this school year, I plan to use this list in my own English department at Thornlea as a way of encouraging teachers to reflect on the effectiveness and integrity of our media curriculum.