Consultations Held on Media Education within Secondary Education

On February 7, 2023, from 12:30 PM to 2:00 PM, the second consultation within the structured dialogue on the project “Media Education Matters.MOV” was held on the Zoom platform. The consultation focused on media education within the secondary education system, discussing the importance of media education for Croatian high school students, the role of social networks and non-traditional media to which adolescents are most exposed, and the development of high school students’ skills in analyzing and critically evaluating the media content they consume daily.

The structured dialogue was moderated by Darija Jeger from the Croatian Debate Society. The consultation also included Žarko Čižmar from the association Telecentar, the author of the guidelines on media education in secondary education, who explained the background of these guidelines and highlighted innovative possibilities for integrating media education into secondary school teaching through project-based learning.

Using the Mentimeter tool, participants in the structured dialogue initially answered questions about what media education means to them, who should play the main role in media education for Croatian high school students, and for which skills media education is essential. Participants’ responses highlighted the need for cooperation among all teachers, educators, school counselors, and principals to provide more comprehensive and modern media education for high school students.

Participants emphasized the need for more systematic digital literacy training for teachers and highlighted the problem of limited technical equipment in some schools, which hinders the quality implementation of project-based learning on media literacy and media education topics. They also pointed out issues related to planning and organizing lessons that would include media education. According to the participants, enthusiastic teachers and school counselors are often overburdened with mandatory content, making it difficult to cover all essential topics for comprehensive media literacy. A proposed solution was to establish in-school working groups to develop an organizational plan for media education and distribute the workload evenly.

The dialogue continued with discussions on how to empower teachers and school counselors to conduct engaging and motivating project-based lessons for students. Key points included interdisciplinarity, collaboration with representatives from the creative and cultural industries, updating existing textbooks, and developing micro-qualifications for teachers.

When asked about students’ ability to find and evaluate information on the internet, participants gave varied responses. The consensus was that while students can find information, they struggle with critically assessing media content and often ignore the sources of the information. Moreover, students tend to put less effort into finding information outside their personal interests. The discussion revealed that the complexity and range of competencies required for effective media education, especially digital literacy and the ability to conduct interdisciplinary project-based learning, often hinder the systematic implementation of media education in high schools and limit the development of students’ skills in creating digital and multimedia content.

Participants unanimously agreed they would use an online repository of examples from multimedia production practices if available. This indicates a need for new calls for multimedia scriptwriters outside the education system to collaborate with teachers and school counselors in creating innovative project-based lessons tailored to contemporary needs and interests of Croatian high school students. However, participants also acknowledged that despite the interest and benefits of project-based learning, it would be challenging to implement within the existing system to enhance students’ media literacy.

At the end of the consultation, participants had the opportunity to rank the recommendations highlighted in the guidelines for improving the position of media education in the secondary education system by importance. The most important recommendation was creating educational content for multimedia project-based learning. The second most important was developing the technical capacities for implementing multimedia projects in teaching, and the third was enhancing the potential of Croatian Language and IT teachers to conduct multimedia project-based teaching. However, the differences in ratings among these goals were minor, indicating that equal efforts are needed to achieve each.

The meeting was organized as part of the project UP.04.2.1.06.0047 “Media Education Matters.MOV,” co-financed by the European Social Fund. The content of this article is the sole responsibility of Gong.