Reviews
The Media Teacher's Book by Julian McDougall
March 20, 2009
A review by Carol Arcus
The 21st century media teacher is at a crossroads. As communications technologies become more user-friendly and student citizens become makers of media, the media educator is bound to interrogate traditional ways of teaching about the media. Here are the two ends of the pedagogical spectrum: Do we let them loose with cell phones and quick video editors the whole semester and upload the whole affair onto youtube in the end, hoping they have absorbed something about media and audiences? Or do we design a teacher-led investigation into a world more than ever their own, giving up ownership of their learning, in desperation, at the end?
The Media Teacher's Book takes on the paradigm shift in teaching media studies - at any level. And it is the first text I have come across that so deftly handles the convergence of old and new.
This book is organized through the following strategy: ideal theory and production-based lessons are presented first, each standing as exemplars of each approach to media education. The rest of the book divides itself by: Teaching Technologies; Industries; Media Literacy (!); Doing the Big Concepts; Media Realities - Audiences and Debates; Managing Production and Research; and finally, Assessing Media Learning. McDougall takes the reader, therefore, from the specific to the general, beginning with best practice, then different, combined practices as they address several concepts, letting the teacher decide how to combine the best of theory and production.
The Grade One Theory Lesson is structured in the same way as the rest of the chapters: classroom strategies separated in boxes, so that the teacher can see the activity as a suggestion, not as an integral factor in the teaching of the topic. One theory-based lesson actually has the students interrogating the notion of theory itself, inventing theory, defining it as a concept, and applying it to realities. McDougall emphasizes the idea that theory teaching should be integrated into production or creative work at all times. This can mean, using McDougall's example, framing a lesson within a foundational idea, rather than within an end-product or activity. To alter one of McDougall's lessons: students initially ask themselves about the ways in which the changing demographics of Canada are negotiated on screen: the production activity, therefore, begins with investigation into audience, industry, and text. Students then produce a movie trailer, study recent Canadian film, new TV series, and look at cutting edge independent Canadian digital video production. Their work would culminate in examining the sum total of their work within that inital prism framework of text/audience/production.
Another theory lesson proceeds a different way: analyzing birthday cards (what a great media text to study!) first according to ideology or gender representation; then, after examining other texts heavy in gender representation, students design their own versions of a song that does not use gender stereotypes.
Despite the range of strategies McDougall uses, he always returns to the same fundamental principle: integrate theory and production. He notes on page 27: "We should be looking to theorize the practical and energize the theoretical so that all Media students are "learning by doing". If we do this, then our teaching is inclusive and we start to erode some of the divisive and unnecessary boundaries between different so-called 'types' of learners".
Those teachers (especially English teachers) who resist production because they have weak technical skills can take heart. In "The Grade One Production Class', McDougall promotes the best kind of classroom group work that simultaneously teaches use of technology and collaborative skills without undue stress on the inexperienced teacher. In the "Grade One Production class chapter, he presents a solution in the form of "Creative buddying": students are paired according to their needs and strengths, ie, a typical pair would have each person in two roles - one as 'expert' and one as 'novice'. The student therefore can teach and learn simultaneously. The pairing can be permanent for the semester, or for one activity only. Either way, the implications are immense for learning: we can adapt this strategy by extending it into peer teaching and mentoring where the teacher's knowledge is weak. Having adopted this strategy in the past, I can only praise it, but would have to emphasize the enormous importance of planning in advance, and knowing your students.
Some highlights from subsequent chapters are: a magazine unit, and a research activity on Nintendo. The magazine work uses Men's Health magazine to categorize - neatly and otherwise - content according to agreed-upon recurrent discourses . The strategies here involve meticulous reading, rather than simple content analysis or broad questions of ideology. Students then move on to looking at how people read the content (as in the 'pick and mix' reader).
The Nintendo work engages those students who might not be initially attracted to traditional ideas of 'research'. Students aim to answer marketing strategy questions about Nintendo - the ways it has chosen to distinguish itself from Sony's Playstation and Microsoft's X-Box Live. Questions range from simple ownership to an assessment of success. The twist in this activity is that it shifts rapidly to a production extension in which students draft ideas for a new computer game called 'Console Launch'. The game's narrative is that of marketing a new console against competitors. Students' ideas, therefore, are framed within their initial research results.
The book is exhaustive in its class strategies, and very rich in theoretical foundations. A teacher intending to use it commits to deep integration of theory and hands-on practice in the classroom. That may mean a critical shift for some of us. However, having fine-tuned several of my classroom strategies based on McDougall's work, I can say my students are the better for it.
I would only offer a minor criticism, and that is that the comprehensive list of classroom strategies at the front of the book should have been organized within a 'checklist' table, rather than simply alphabetically with the chapter number attached. A table with several categories such as 'audience', 'English lit integration', or 'research', for example, would provide a teacher with the means to search in terms of purpose and learning context. As it is, it is difficult to know what "Tutorials", for example, means out of context.
Still, McDougall's notions that no theory is 'too hard' for any learners, or that 'no media lesson should be taught in the same way two year running' really raise the bar for those teachers who relish a steep learning curve for both themselves and their students.
The Media Teacher's Book by Julian McDougall (2006). Great Britain: Hodder Education. 226 pp. (Published by Oxford University Press in the US). Order from Amazon, or check your local educational bookstore, and expect to pay around $50, American or Canadian. This book sells for 23 British pounds online through Amazon.uk.