Moving Image Education: A critical reflection of an elective promoting its use in primary and secondary contexts.

Author(s):

Sandra Nicol(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2013

Network:

21. Emerging Researchers' Group (for presentation at Emerging Researchers' Conference)

Format:

Paper

Session Information

ERG SES G11, Students, Teachers and Pedagogy in Education

Paper Session

Time:

2013-09-10

09:00-10:30

Room:

A-206

Chair:

Martin Goy

Contribution

Background

Moving Imagery is now a global phenomenon with access across the world. With an increasing multimodal approach to literacy in the 21stC, effective teachers require to be proactive in enhancing their own personal literacy and that of pupils. The power of moving image can help to make education more meaningful and memorable for pupils at all stages of their development. With technology as it stands, there are plenty of resources available to offer innovative support to the curriculum. This has impact for education internationally and there is a need to share knowledge and understanding about how moving image impacts on the lives of all of us but in particular, children and young people, who have increasing skills in accessing imagery from a range of localities through a variety of media. Moving Image Education (MIE) by its very nature requires pupils to be involved in activities that call upon them to engage and experiment across the full range of learning styles which in turn provides stimulation for pupils to utilise and develop their abilities across the spectrum of ‘intelligences’ (Gardner 1983, 1999). However, there appears to be a parallel curriculum developing where school students are seeing this as an increasingly important part of their life outside school.

It was decided to offer a new study module in Moving Image Education as an elective for Postgraduate Diploma in Education (PGDE) students for them to explore, examine and analyse information that children and young people interact with on a daily basis. Many of us are now regularly bombarded with moving images via traditional formats such as film and television, through computers and mobile phones to innovative devices such as Ipads without necessarily having cognisance of what we are actually seeing. This module gave the opportunity for students to offer their pupils such a medium that would widen engagement and encourage them to adopt a questioning approach to what they were seeing. There was also an emphasis on this being student led with tutor support in order to encourage the students to take an independent stance to their own learning and how to gather appropriate materials for teaching.

This paper examines the results of the research carried out during the rolling out of this course to gauge how to offer students the capability of working with pupils in this more creative and appealing way.

The research questions were:

How does the module In Moving Image Education help to:

- Elicit what the students themselves understand about the amount of moving image they encounter on a daily basis?

- Understand how they begin to analyse what they are seeing and then use this to encourage debate and discussion with their pupils?

- Assess the range of materials linked with Moving Image Education that are available in helping support them in reasoned choices for sharing with pupils?

- Support assessing their own progress and that of their pupils?

Method

The theoretical framework surrounds the idea that moving images play a significant part in a child or young person’s life and that the bombardment of such means that little of what they are seeing is analysed to any great degree. By encouraging students to analyse these images themselves, it should result in a realisation of how much more critical they need to be with regard to the information received and how to sift through the detail to raise awareness of what is important, comes with bias and whether the information received is of a balanced nature, encouraging them to adopt the same strategies with pupils to adopt a more questioning approach. The project took an interpretivist approach with a thematic interpretation of the data. Through entry and exit questionnaires and a midpoint collection of discussion topics, data was collected to allow the emergence of particular responses. Evidence was garnered according to themes that emerged and analysed to assess the effectiveness of the work incorporated as part of the teaching within the module. Areas that were a positive support are to be emphasized in the future with attention paid to what the students think they lack in skills, knowledge and understanding.

Expected Outcomes

Through the analysis of the data, participating students found MIE an interesting and useful tool in supporting teaching and learning, viewing it as engaging for pupils and had application in several ways such as an introduction or plenary to lessons, through to a major role in teaching particular concepts or as an aid to support learning in a focused area. Negatives relate to technical aspects of the operation of equipment and location of the lesson. This outcome sits well with the literature review, several reports highlighting the useful application of MIE for pupils to engage and enhance learning. In contrast, it has become clear that there was a real tension between students having freedom to dictate how the module adapted to their circumstances with the amount of structure a tutor might provide. This study needs replication to determine what these supports and frameworks need to be and how these can be tailored to suit the stage of development of each cohort of students. This would provide more concrete evidence as to the worthiness of MIE and whether in fact there is indeed a parallel curriculum, one in school and one outwith.

References

Bazalgette, C. (2009) Impacts of Moving Image. A summary of research report for Scottish Screen Gardner, H. (1983) Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. New York: Basic Book Head, G. (2008) Evaluation of Moving Image Education Report: For Young People not in Employment, Education or Training. University of Glasgow: Faculty of Education Kress, G.& Jewitt, C. (2003) Multimodal Literacy New Literacies and Digital Epistemologies V. 4 New York: Lang Lord, P., Jones, M., Harland, J., Bazalgette, C., Reid, M., Potter, J. & Kinder, K. (2007) Special Effects: The Distinctiveness of learning outcomes in relation to moving image education projects. Final Report. Marsh, J. & Bearne, E. (2008) Moving Literacy On: Evaluation of the BFI Lead Practitioner Scheme for moving image media literacy. The University of Sheffield Moving Image Education in Scotland (The Brechin Project) (undated) Scottish Screen Payne, F., Spratt, J. & McIntosh, K. (2009) An Evaluation of a Development Programme in Moving Image Education in a Local Authority in Scotland 2007-09 University of Aberdeen

Author Information

Sandra Nicol (presenting / submitting)

University of Aberdeen, United Kingdom

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