EMEDUS Project presents its preliminary conclusions in the conference Media & Learning

The EMEDUS Project presented its preliminary conclusions in the conference Media & Learning on December 12 and 13. José Manuel Pérez Tornero, as principal researcher in the project at Autonomous University of Barcelona, and Juanfran Martinez, also a researcher in the project, shared preliminary conclusions of this research.

One of these is that both formal and continuing education play fundamental roles in media literacy. While practically all European countries include some media literacy content in their school curricula, most only pay more attention to digital literacy and ICT, which constitute separate subjects.

What EMEDUS also highlights is the need to stress aspects of media literacy which involve critical understanding related to content creation and communication. EMEDUS researchers stress the importance of including media literacy in teacher training programmes and promote the inclusion of the MIL Curriculum for Teachers developed by UNESCO. They also point to the good practice of Luxembourg where media literacy is already a compulsory subject in teacher training programmes.

The EMEDUS team also stresses that there are many different actors involved in the field of informal media education and that initiatives outside the school need to be properly evaluated, acknowledging the fact that most of these projects are supported by public funds.

Several debates, workshops and round tables around the use of media for learning processes took place in this meeting that counted with 267 participants from 27 different countries. José Manuel Pérez Tornero also gave a lecture focused on audiences and on the change our societies have gone through as media users: from being "outside" the media to experience, in the 90s, a process of hybridisation through which we are inside the media and so, being able to manage our own consumption and knowledge through media literacy.