Week 1: Media, Language and Multiliteracies/ Multimedia and Technology

Research carried out by Marsh (2005) clearly identifies practitioner’s fluctuating views on the role of popular culture, media and new technologies in the classroom. He discovered that 63% of practitioners agree that video and console games should be used as part of the curriculum, simultaneously they express the view that such media used too often in the home (Marsh, 2005:48). This collision of viewpoints is also reciprocated in my survey results, as the majority of parents interviewed stated that children are missing out on using advanced technologies in school, and that they should be implemented throughout the school subjects. However the same parents complain that their children used such items at home too often. With this in mind it is difficult to comprehend which view to hold as a trainee teacher, when there is so much confliction within the profession and amongst the parenting adults.

Perhaps it depends on the type of media being used, as many stated in Marsh’s questionnaires that they use popular TV characters extensively in the role play and small world areas in the early years’ settings. In contrast, previous researchers have identified that comics’ lack intricate language and are not challenging enough as a stimuli in the classroom (Clark and Moss, 2001). On all of my placements I have not thought twice about using popular media or technologies within the classroom. However the argument that using such mediums is simply dumbing down the curriculum, has encouraged me to rethink.

In contrast it has been argued that ‘It is equally important in the modern world to be equally fluent in multiple forms of language through which society communicates with itself’ (Dean, 2010:5). Dean stipulates that as teachers we should be capitalising on children’s previous knowledge of ‘media literacy’. He explains that children already have a secure literacy of branches of popular culture, including film, print and technologies; teachers are consistently being encouraged to work from children’s prior knowledge yet seem to overlook this aspect.

Clark and Moss (2001) in Marsh, J. Brooks,G. Hughes,J. Ritchie, L. Roberts, S. Wright, K (2005) Digital beginnings: Young children’s use of popular culture, media and new Technologies University of Sheffield

Dean, G. ‘Rethinking Literacy’ in Bazalgette, C. (ed) (2010) Teaching Media in Primary Classrooms London:Sage

Marsh, J. Brooks,G. Hughes,J. Ritchie, L. Roberts, S. Wright, K (2005) Digital beginnings: Young children’s use of popular culture, media and new Technologies University of Sheffield

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