Media-making matters: exploring literacy with young learners as media crafting, critique and artistry.

Abstract

This research is a timely response to the widespread use of digital media in western social worlds, and a perceived gulf separating school practices from those in contemporary living. I argue for a dynamic educational experience that embeds digital media production in the curriculum. Of central importance is the investigation of a wider conception of literacy that includes the manipulation of moving image and sound through time, as a means of creative expression that also shows critical understanding. By drawing out the particular characteristics of learning with digital media, I identify the ways in which traditional pedagogies could be transformed in order to accommodate more social and collaborative ways of working. In relation to this I explore discursive tensions, including current educational reform measures, perceived as hindering the development of dispersed digital media-making practices. Qualitative ethnographic methods were chosen for their capacity to engage with the complex tensions and textures of modern pedagogy. Photographic, audiovisual and interview materials were gathered in formal and non-formal school settings which, through the adaptation of a values-driven hermeneutic framework, inspired critical and reflexive narrative interpretations. The discussion draws on theories related to cultural studies, media literacy, and film and moving image composition to explore our ‘performance’ with digital media in a networked society, under the prevailing social conditions of possibility. This study positions media-making in schools as a core entitlement which adds to and enriches, rather than supplants, traditional literacy. Given the complex ways in which modern social actors use media representations to negotiate identity, and their relationships with each other and the environment, it is argued that providing primary learners with opportunities for creative digital media-making will create a more relevant, engaging and critically-oriented school experience. Practical media work nurtures the skills, competencies and disposition for praxis-oriented socio-cultural participation, of benefit to the individual, and the local and wider community.