The pages that follow explore teaching, learning and making with digital media, as they relate to practical film and moving image work in schools. It comes at a time of widespread use of digital media in western social worlds, and a perceived gulf separating many school practices from those in everyday living. The book argues for more personally relevant dynamic school experiences that embed film and media production in the curriculum as standard, rather than as optional or extracurricular. Of central importance is the investigation of an enlarged conception of literacy: one that includes not only the manipulation of moving image, sound and time, but also one that considers the socio-historical conditions of media production and issues related to practical âways of knowingâ. In this account, creative expression and critical understanding are seen as interdependent dimensions of literacy: as entwined and inseparable as the surface of a Möbius strip. By articulating the particular characteristics of learning with digital media, I identify the ways in which pedagogy can be developed in order to accommodate more social and collaborative classroom practice. I also interrogate the tensions related to policymakersâ educational interventions that are seen to obstruct the development of dispersed digital media-making, such as film-making in schools. This work seeks to position media production as a core entitlement adding to and enriching, rather than supplanting, established literacy practices, and one that supports primary learners as âwritersâ of audiovisual media as well as âreadersâ.
Drawing on theories related to Cultural Studies, anthropology, film and media education, new literacy studies, multimodality and moving image composition, I explore young learnersâ âperformanceâ with digital media in specific educational settings. Given the complex ways in which modern social actors use media representations to negotiate their identity and relationships within networks, I suggest that providing young learners, defined in this study as those aged between nine and twelve, with opportunities for creative digital media expression delivers a relevant, engaging and critically-oriented school experience. Whilst making no claims for creative media as a remedial, emancipatory silver bulletâgiven the many other economic factors affecting social advantageâit is proposed that practical media work does at the very least nurture the skills and disposition for inclusive, praxis-oriented cultural participation. It is hoped that learners and educators across sectors will find the energy and resources to embrace this socially-framed vision of literacy, which promises to be of benefit not only to individual everyday lives, but also to the cultural prosperity of local communities.
This vision of contemporary literacy encompasses the study of film language and the production of moving image as an important cultural dimension of education. This approach hinges on collaborative meaning-making practices that combine pupilsâ interests and popular cultural motifs with:
- iterative social and cognitive engagements with media forms
- concrete inscription and crafting of media assets with digital tools of production
- the proactive development of imaginative and conceptual leaps
- sensibility and criticality towards the social and environmental network of relations embedded in everyday living
These suggestions are rooted in years of largely non-formal teaching experience in urban primary school environments and provide a framework for this review of contemporary literacy practices.
Personal Motivations
My engagement in this field sprang from a former life as a ânew mediaâ professional with an interest in education. From 2000 I had been working part-time in East London primary schools in a role that transformed over the years from in-house web designer/developer to âcreative media practitionerâ. As the use and development of digital media and distribution platforms evolved, I began to take an interest in the particular learning affordances of projects with children that involved âmultimediaâ. One particular school was unusual at the time in that its Head Teacher had invested in an iMac suite, upgrading hardware and software as it became available. He saw the value of a weekly slot for a freelancer such as myself to build the school website and involve the children in its maintenance: an embryonic model of a media-practitioner-educator began to emerge.
Media production work in schools largely takes place outside the formal curriculum in the non-formal spaces of extracurricular arts activities or after school projects, however, my experience began with coordinating such projects that were integrated into formal cross-curricular subject areas. After Mac software training via CPD (Continuing Professional Development), I began making simple edited video clips in iMovie with small groups of Key Stage 2 children (7- to 11-year olds). I remember noticing the childrenâs enthusiasm for learning: intellectual and social engagement; a willingness to experiment with new digital modes; and strong motivation linked to public displays of their work. My impression was that some were experiencing a hitherto elusive fascination with and control over a creative process, in a medium that was at once strange and familiar. My sessions differed from most regular classes in a number of ways: there was a sense of shared purpose and ownership, the social arrangements were less hierarchical, their work was publicly valued and peer reviewed, and many were committed to iterative and improvisational revisions to simply make their work ârightâ or âbetterâ in some way.
The personal disclosure with which I begin this section serves as a blueprint for much of what follows. These early experiences of making texts or âwritingâ with digital mediaâexperiences which were, importantly, as much a learning process for me as for the childrenâraise questions not only concerning school cultures and the premise on which mainstream practices are based, but also how meaning-making with digital media warrants an evolved concept of literacy and alternative classroom practices. This entreaty for more relevant approaches to learningâbeyond the purchase and installation of new tools and technology (Buckingham 2007)âis nothing new and has been made repeatedly by media educators and new literacy advocates for decades (Bazalgette 1989, 2000; Bazalgette and Bearne 2010; Buckingham 1986, 1990, 2003; Buckingham and Sefton-Green 1994; Burnett 2016; Burnett and Merchant 2015; Lankshear and Knobel 2003, 2011; Marsh and Bearne 2008; Sinker 2000).
Media Education Conundra
The ways in which we make meaning and interact socially are changed by the participatory affordances of digital media (Ito 2009; Ito et al. 2013; Jenkins et al. 2006, 2016; Kafai and Peppler 2011; Reid 2014). These thus present a challenge to many educational institutions, whose priorities and practices are, for many, outdated (Burn 2009; Potter 2012), fraught as they are with bureaucratic political interventions (Pring 2004; Ball 2013) and hierarchies (Merrin 2009, 2014). The view is that while other sectors variously adapt, the school sectorâincreasingly shaped and monitored by central governmentâis not only slow to respond to changes in the social and media landscape, but is hampered by retrogressive reform measures that cleave towards âthe basicsâ and marginalise media (Buckingham 2014).
The traditional versus the ...