Abstract:

Witnessing the expansion of the virtual environment, pedagogues and parents might well be tempted to uncritically join the heyday of media conquest of schools - a sphere traditionally belonging to human interaction. Fascination with technological possibilities is able to drown out considerations of age-appropriate pedagogic process and environment. As a result, technological trends may outpace human judgement on what needs to be done so as to make children media literate. In order to counter such practice, child development and the impacts of media exposure at different ages need to be carefully considered.

Yet the present state of affairs reveals a lack of an explicit development-focused transversal agenda to unite cross-curricular media topics under a single roof. Determined to overcome that, Prometheus, a media literacy project involving schools, universities, and NGOs, sought to pool scientific and practical resources in order to draw up a comprehensive approach to age-appropriate media education. This article will present and discuss the results of the project.

In line with its aims, Prometheus managed to combine the big picture of child development stages and media characteristics with concrete (hands-on) pedagogical tools, thus developing a novel integral approach for empowering teaching professionals and parents alike. More specifically, Prometheus has provided straightforward answers on when and where to do what and, most importantly, why. Well-argued guidelines have been developed for the introduction of specific types of media at an adequate child age as part of an innovative instrument: Media Literacy Metacurriculum. Striking a balance between real-world engagement and technology, essentially tailored to the age of the child, ensures a nuanced and developmentally appropriate introduction to media within existing school subjects. In line with the above, Prometheus also derived a number of ready-to-use pedagogical tools for subject areas spanning from sciences to arts. Each of them offers to empower the practitioner on at least two levels - by providing (i) a theoretical foundation underpinning the chosen learning materials and (ii) practical pedagogical actions for their effective implementation. Concrete cases and the reasoning behind them are presented in the paper.

Keywords:

Media literacy, Age-Appropriate Learning, Media Education.