Abstract:

Boundaries between the real and the virtual are being shifted every day. Inadequate exposure to the media (technology) disrupts the healthy development of a young individual. Adverse effects have been scientifically proven at the cognitive, emotional, and physical levels. Schools are expected to provide media education that supports child development. Teachers are expected to be media-empowered individuals to stimulate the empowerment of their young learners, too.

However, little has been done to meet these needs. Experience and analyses show that media literacy is mostly educated without an explicit development-focused transversal plan to unite cross-curricular topics under a single conceptual umbrella. ICT and technical aspects play a dominant role in school-run media education. At the tertiary level, no permanent structured approach is offered to empower the (future) teacher on the matter in line with their subject of interest. Project-driven extracurricular activities remain scattered and limited in focus.

This paper will present results from project Prometheus on a dedicated and comprehensive approach to media education. It is aimed mainly at teachers but is also suitable for parents and other companions of adolescents. It serves a common goal: to empower adults to play an active role in media literacy education that takes into account the developmental steps of the child and adolescent. Project is an interplay of content in 4 steps: Level 1 is a meta-curriculum that classifies the media relevance of learning content according to the developmental stages of the adolescent and the content's fit with existing school subjects. Level 2 provides an insight into the theoretical background of the selected learning content (objectives, relevance, background of related social phenomena), while Level 3 sets out practical pedagogical steps for its implementation. Level 4, based on the previous three, derives study content for future or active educators, to build discerning power for media literacy education for children and adolescents within specific subject areas. At this level, Prometheus creates the conditions that allow for the further development of metacurricular content and all that it implies. In this way, the project aims at the integrity and sustainability of developing an appropriate pedagogy in the media field.

Keywords:

Media Literacy, Age Appropriate.