A Site of Conflict and Resistance: The Impact of the 2014 Curriculum Reforms on A’ Level Media Studies.

Abstract

This thesis explores a pivotal moment in the development of A’ Level Media Studies, precipitated by the UK government’s 2014 educational reforms. Implemented in September 2017, these reforms represented a radical departure from what had gone before, and led to significant debate and discontent amongst the media teaching community. The study focuses on how these changes affected media studies, based on the lived experiences of teachers navigating the new specifications. Using the author’s dual status as a teacher-researcher, this research adopts a multi-method approach, combining critical discourse analysis (Fairclough 1989, 1995) with netnography (Kozinets 2020) and a hermeneutic phenomenological ‘attitude’ (Suddick et al 2020) to build a ‘thick description’ (Geertz 1973) of the real-life experiences of media studies teachers against the political backdrop of education reform. The study addresses four key questions: the impact of the 2014 reforms on media studies' curriculum and subject identity, the effect on teachers' pedagogic experiences, the reforms' influence on teacher agency and professional identity, and how the subject might evolve in the future. Research methods include critical discourse analysis of policy documents and reform speeches, a netnography of three online media teacher communities, and a range of qualitative interviews with media teachers and other key figures in media education. Findings reveal widespread dissatisfaction among teachers regarding the new curriculum's content and structure, with many expressing frustration, disillusionment and, in some cases, anger. However, the study also reveals a renewed ideological commitment to the subject, with educators advocating for a more flexible, dynamic curriculum. The thesis argues that the rigid and narrow conception of knowledge underpinning the reforms is incompatible with the ‘spirit’ of media studies. Instead, it proposes an alternative conception of knowledge—the dynamic episteme—which offers a more fluid, agile, and responsive approach that acknowledges the collective ways in which knowledge is constructed by those vested in the subject’s development. This theoretical concept can also extend beyond media studies to broader educational contexts. By providing a more adaptable understanding of knowledge, the dynamic episteme presents alternative ways to conceptualize how knowledge is co-constructed in contextually relevant ways, generating new understandings about how other subject disciplines may develop and evolve.