Media education: literacy, learning and contemporary culture

David Buckingham

Polity 2003, £16.99 232 pp ISBN 0-7456-2830-3

There hasn't been a general book about media education – one which explains the history, argues the case and contextualises debates about pedagogy – since the early 1990s. For this reason alone, David Buckingham's book is a boon to INSET providers. Now there is something substantial to place alongside the plethora of textbooks that face the teacher new to the area.

David Buckingham is one of a handful of UK media educationists with an international reputation. His major contributions to the field have been the establishment of a significant research base at the Institute of Education in London, a staggering output of research reports and scholarly books, and support and encouragement for the large numbers of teachers who have passed through the Institute's media provision. All this provides him with the raw material for a carefully constructed argument for media education which has the potential to inspire media teachers, whatever their level of experience.

The book is in four sections – Rationale, 'The State of the Art', Media Learning and 'New Directions'. Buckingham argues that a new book is needed because media teaching still remains marginal in the school curriculum and media teachers need to be recognised and supported. He fears that some academic media supporters have been seduced by 'utopian fantasies' about political change achievable through curriculum development and that other advocates have attempted to 're-brand' media education in relation to 'creativity' or 'new technologies'. What is required, he argues in the 'Rationale', is a re-statement of fundamental principles and a coherent basis on which to move forward with real educational practices.

And this is what the book achieves. Buckingham is very good at sketching out the history and defining the field, re-working all the various attempts to define Key Concepts. He offers an excellent analysis of what he calls 'New Media Childhoods' and the implications for teaching and learning that arise from the changing relationships between young people and media producers. This is one of the great strengths of Buckingham's work – a clear-eyed view of how young people work with media texts and what they can achieve. He offers a useful analysis of the arguments for 'media literacy' and what it might mean. The section on Media Learning is illuminated by classroom research and attempts to put together a pedagogy that recognises both critical and creative work. The conclusions about the potential benefits of digital technologies are straightforward and sensible. The ease of use and high quality of student products needs to be accompanied by reflection, deliberation and dialogue – with teachers and peers if the experience is to have value. New technologies need informed pedagogies.

If there is a weakness in the book it is in the overview of what constitutes media education in the UK in 2002, when the book was written. Partly this may be because there is a conscious attempt to address an international readership and too much UK course detail could be overwhelming. But I think that the book also displays a rather 'London-centric' view. Buckingham acknowledges the excellent work of Jenny Grahame and all the teachers who have supported the English and Media Centre and it is this work, and the work of the Institute student teachers, which informs much of the discussion. My own experience tells me that media education outside London is not quite the same as the metropolitan variant. For one thing, media teachers in London are much closer to national media industries, but conversely, much less tied in to local producers and a local media environment. For another, London students themselves are not representative of the national student body. So, where he discusses media education outside the classroom, Buckingham doesn't really do justice to the wide range of activities around the UK and the different conditions that produce them.

Buckingham's own interests are mainly in secondary school media education and he largely ignores what has been happening post-16 in the world of centralised 'specifications' for AS/A2 Media Studies. He does recognise the problems that National Curriculum has presented to GCSE Media teachers, but in his focus on schools, rather than the overall picture of schools and colleges, he makes some strange statements. Yes, at lower secondary level, Media Studies is still a minor subject compared to History and Geography, but not at AS – in fact, I think it's worrying that AS Media Studies is replacing important humanities and social science subjects. Although he offers an interesting discussion about the importance of media production work with students, Buckingham doesn't fully appreciate what has been happening in vocational media education in the UK. Like many of the academic critics of 'vocationalism', he over-estimates the growth of such courses, but under-estimates their positive contributions to curriculum development in media education. On reflection, I think the failure of GNVQ/AVCE Media to develop can partly be attributed to the generally misguided criticism it has received. The research exercises that David Buckingham has set up in secondary education could be profitably extended to look at how the production elements of OCR's AS/A2 specifications have developed, consciously or not, in tandem with those for VCE Media.

Buckingham has a wealth of classroom research on which to draw and he uses it well. However, I do fear that some of it is now seriously dated and I wonder what new teachers will make of references to classroom work in the early 1990s. Again, this isn't to criticise the pedagogy as such. I would certainly still want to promote, for example, simulation as a classroom strategy, but whenever I do I'm met with with a look of disbelief from many teachers that anything so time-consuming could be fitted in to a scheme of work.

I'm perhaps not the target readership for this book. I do agree with virtually everything David Buckingham says about media pedagogy and I genuinely welcome what will be an essential book for new teachers. I just hope that the many already-practising media teachers that I come across each year will recognise enough of their own experience in its pages to be motivated to follow through and take on board its argument.

Roy Stafford
Media INSET provider