Finnish and Korean primary teachers’ perceptions of themselves as media users and media literacy educators
Submitted by:
Mari Hankala
Abstract:
Media texts and media literacy skills are crucial resources for learning in all school subjects. The teacher decides how media is used and how media skills are practiced in the classroom. Teacher’s educational beliefs (Hermans, Tondeur, van Braak & Valcke 2008), literacy attitudes (McCoss-Yergian & Krepps 2010), their media use, and attitudes towards media (Hankala 2011) can impact their teaching. Pupils should have equal opportunities to access media and develop media literacy skills. Therefore, it is important to study teachers’ perceptions.
The aim of the research is to study primary teachers’ perceptions of themselves as media users and media educators and to determine how they think these two aspects are related. The data consists of 35 Finnish primary teachers’ and 16 Korean primary teachers’ essays that include elements of their autobiographical reflections about themselves as media users and media literacy educators.
Finland and South Korea recently revised their national curricula, and media literacy is reflected in the core competence of ‘multiliteracies’ (in Finland) and of ‘communication’ (in South Korea). Implementation of the pedagogy of multiliteracies and communication, of which media literacy is a part, has cultural roots, and like educational choices, depends on society. Therefore, it is worthwhile to compare teachers’ perceptions in the two countries.
The preliminary results of a content analysis of the teachers’ essays show that most teachers felt they have positive relationships with the media as media users, and they use different kinds of media texts and technology actively in their teaching for a variety of purposes. Attitudes towards media education were positive in general, and teachers were aware of their values and awareness in media education. However, teachers’ media literacy skills and knowledge varied greatly. The paper will also discuss similarities and differences in teachers’ perceptions and uses of media in the classroom in the two countries, considering the historical and sociocultural contexts of (media) literacy education.
References
Hankala M. 2011. Sanomalehdellä aktiiviseksi kansalaiseksi? Näkökulmia nuorten sanomalehtien lukijuuteen ja koulun sanomalehtiopetukseen. [Active citizenship through newspapers? Perspectives on young people’s newspaper readership and on the use of newspapers in education]. University of Jyväskylä. Studies in Humanities 148.
Hermans, R. Tondeur, J. van Braak J. & Valcke M. 2008. The impact of primary school teachers’ educational beliefs on the classroom use of computers. Computers & Education 51 (4), 1499-1509.
McCoss-Yergian & Krepps 2010, Do teacher attitudes impact literacy strategy implementation in content area classrooms? Journal of Instructional Pedagogies 4. http://www.aabri.com/manuscripts/10519.pdf