Abstract
Media education has come a long way since 1977 when UNESCO made the first international survey. In industrialised countries of the West, media education is increasingly accepted as part of primary and secondary school education. In Australia and Britain, for example, it is now offered as an optional course, and in other countries it is taught as part of social studies, art or language/literature curricula. In regions such as Latin America there are programmes for working-class women in poor neighbourhoods or for rural families. There has been a boom in textbooks, teaching packs and audiovisual materials. Teacher training has long been neglected, but now there are graduate degree programmes in media education and special courses in schools of education and in departments of communication. Media education is being recognized as an important discipline in the field of communications with a prominent place in professional meetings such as the International Television Studies Conference in London.
The relatively rapid expansion of media education has brought with it much debate about teaching methods, teacher training and criteria for evaluating programmes. Controversy centres on conflicting educational theories and questions about the role of media education in communication policy.
This issue reports some of the current major approaches to media education and suggests how a more unified theory of media education is taking shape.
Recommended Citation
(1985)
"Media Education: Growth and Controversy,"
Communication Research Trends: Vol. 6:
No.
4, Article 1.
Available at:
https://scholarcommons.scu.edu/crt/vol6/iss4/1
