Media education in Four eu countries - Kennisnet

1. IntroductionMedia literacy is therefore a broad concept that goes beyond simply knowing how a device works:• The emphasis is sometimes placed on such aspects as privacy and protecting children from“inappropriate material”. In other cases, the emphasis is on information skills and citizenship.This is a question of taste and tradition.• Somebody who is media literate knows in any case that tweets can be read by anybody, thatnot all websites that look trustworthy are in fact trustworthy, and that not all games have beencreated just to amuse the gamer.At the highest level of abstraction, terms such as media literacy always involve empowerment,autonomy, participation, emancipation, and democratic citizenship. Protecting media usersagainst “bad influences” – the more defensive approach – precedes this and is thereforesubordinate to it.It is difficult to say when somebody is genuinely “media literate” because the media to which thatterm refers are constantly changing. Ultimately, media literacy is an attitude based on:• critical capacity;• solid basic knowledge;• mentality;• know-how;• skills.Design of the studyThis report is based on discussions with experts from Finland, Sweden, the United Kingdom andthe Netherlands, and on published material. All this has been used to create a profile for eachcountry. The profiles are preceded by an outline of the situation in Europe as a whole and followedby an analysis of the results.The structure of the country profiles is not the same in each case because the available materialwas different. (The material has not all been translated into English, and the various countries donot all carry out as much research on media education.) It has been possible, however, to deal witha number of specific key aspects for each country, for example government policy, the curriculum,best practices, and the approaches adopted by the main parties involved.The focus is on schools. This means that libraries – which play an important role in almost all thecountries surveyed – have not been included in the study. We have also not considered mediaeducation focusing on games – or using games – because hardly anything has been published onthat topic.Structure of this publicationWe discuss:• Europe;• Finland;• Sweden;• the United Kingdom;• the Netherlands.The report is concluded by an analyses and an overview of the literature consulted.Media Education in Four EU Countries How do Finland, Sweden, and the UK tackle media education?And how does that compare to the Netherlands? Mijn Kind Online / Kennisnet, October 20137