Early Childhood Education
Neelam Parmar is currently engaged in doctoral research which attempts to determine the role of new media technology in early childhood education. Her work focuses on whether new media can encourage phonetic recognition and awareness with young children through effective pedagogic practices. Neelam has recently written about her work with John-Siraj Blatchford in the online journal, He Kupu: Knowledge learning processes and ICT in early childhood education. She has produced evaluations for IBM KidSmart Project that has served as a benchmark for appropriate ICT learning software in India and is presently involved in pursuing research for RM Slates using mobile tablet applications in the early years of young children.
Media Education in Primary Schools
Marketa Zezulkova’s doctoral research is a comparative cross-cultural study that looks at media education theory and practice in the Czech Republic, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America. The project explores how, and why, the arguments for, and against, media education for primary school children differ from one country to another, and how the findings might influence local and international development of media education in primary schools. Marketa has been invited by Dr. Donald Hurwitz and Dr. Paul Mihailidis to the Emerson College in Boston (MA, USA) and by Professor Renee Hobbs to the University of Rhode Island in Kingston (RI, USA) to come as a Visiting Scholar for the autumn semester 2012. She also regularly participates at EU’s Media Literacy Expert Group Meetings in Brussels. An initial output of her study has resulted in the article 'Unity is Strength' published by A Manifesto for Media Education.
A Level in Media Studies
We appear to be at a crucial ideological moment in relation to the curriculum in schools and colleges as the coalition government attempts to impose a particular vision of education, in which Media Studies seem to have no part. Why do young people choose Media Studies A level in the face of the prevalence of negative attitudes towards the subject? Once they start the course, how do they find their experience of it differs from their learning in other subjects and in the rest of their schooling? What difference do pedagogic strategies such as group work and the use of web 2.0 tools like blogging make to learning? How are teachers responding to recent developments in media education, especially around technology? How does the use of ICT in Media Studies compare with its use elsewhere in schools and colleges? How does the rhetoric measure up to the messy reality of the classroom?
Pete Fraser’s project takes the OCR A level in Media Studies as a case study to look at these questions and others, through field visits involving interviews with teachers and students. Pete is the Chief Examiner for the A level, so finds himself in a unique position to investigate its practice. He has presented his work in progress at the Media Education Summit and the Media Literacy conference in 2010, at the ‘Life without Media’ conference in Barcelona in June 2011 and at the ‘Media and Learning’ conference in Brussels in November 2011 and has a research report coming up in the next edition of MERJ.
Higher Education in Media and Promotion
Marketa Zezulkova, inspired by the philosophy of education, researched what is and what should be the purpose of higher education in media and promotion in the 21st century and how the philosophy is and would be reflected in educational practice. Marketa conducted over two years long participant observations at Czech, French and British universities, as well as interviews with graduates and educators from 32 countries across four continents. The research discovered the dominance of a utilitarian philosophy held by the educational institutions, which suggests that students’ professional development is superior to their personal development as well as to the needs of society. However, the research uncovered students’ demand for personal enhancement and appreciation of social skill improvements gained throughout the study years. Therefore the study proposed a philosophy that balances utilitarian education with the philosophy of liberal education, and puts emphasis on the education of the student as a whole; all in order to help him or her fully develop as a social being and citizen for their own sake as well as for the sake of society. Marketa presented the research at the MeCCSA-PGN Conference 2011.
