Interns- Media Pedagogy

Pedagogy

• Pedagogy is a method and practice of teaching.
• Media pedagogy includes necessary changes to traditional pedagogy.
• Media pedagogy has a lot in common with constructivist theory in education.
• Constructivism is based on research for cognitive psychology, and suggests that people learn by constructing their own knowledge through an active learning process rather than simply absorbing knowledge directly from some other source.
• It took deep reforms in education recognize that knowledge is constructed by the student not given or delivered by teachers.
• Because technology is always changing, media pedagogy presents knowledge as problematic rather than fixed.
• On the staff side, media pedagogy is less content driven and instead based more on problem-solving.
• This educational approach promotes higher order thinking skills and the development critical analysis, metacognition, and reflection, often through creation, editing, and “publishing.”
• In media instruction, the continually changing nature of medium pushes its instructors to not just be users of technology, but co-creators of media work.

With an emphasis on student-centered education, it is critical to think about the student population.

At a fundamental level curriculum should be relevant and diverse, which requires an awareness of student interests and needs.

What groups of students do you get to know and how? Staff can be at a disadvantage for this. Faculty get so much more time with students. The Multimedia Lab provides a unique opportunity for this, but we need help from faculty to get to know their students prior to workshops.

Some major, but certainly not all, categories of student diversity that we will want to hold in our minds during all of our instruction are:

Racial and Ethnic Identity:

• Students identify with many different cultures and ways of looking at the world.
• As an educator, is paramount to learn about student background and expectations.
• Recognition of racial and ethnic differences provide an understanding for more effective instruction.

Cultural Pluralism

• Cultural Pluralism rejects both cultural assimilation (the process of incorporating an immigrant group into mainstream culture) and separatism (cultural groups should maintain their own identity without trying to fit into an overall American culture), instead each subculture maintains its own individuality while contributing to the whole. The goal is to create a sense of society’s fullness based on the unique strength of each of its parts--instead of a melting pot, a mosaic.
• Traditionally schools have been run for the benefit of those in the dominant culture, thereby excluding minority groups from receiving the full range of benefits.
• If a school was to support cultural pluralism, it would avoid dominance of a single culture. Faculty, staff, and administration would be diverse and would be minority role models for students to interact with.
• Curriculum would be filled with the histories and contributions of diverse groups.

Demographics at Evergreen:

For 2016:

• 29% enrollment for students of color
• 229 total faculty, 53 faculty of color
• 554 total staff, 124 staff of color

Multicultural Education

Multicultural Education is a response to economic inequality, racism, and sexism in American Culture. It goals include: reducing prejudice, improving the academic achievement of minority students, building commitment to cultural pluralism, and incorporating minority groups’ perspectives into curriculum. Multiculturalism comes out of the social justice movements 60s. It’s lead to things like single-group studies, like African American and women’s studies and curriculum that examines inequality and oppression and actions to remediate these inequalities.

What does this concept mean for our work?

Media is involved in the transmission of information, correct or incorrect, balanced or biased. Representation in media--images, videos, sound. Who are the subjects you are showing, what artists are you mentioning? All curriculum is a choice.

Can we as a work group generate terminology that can replace problematic media terms that come out of the military, binary gendering, and racism?

With the acknowledgement that there is not equity between dominant and minority groups in education, should this change how you spend your time and attention with populations of students in workshops or on productions?

Promoting equity in the classroom does not necessarily mean treating all students equally. Though it does mean giving all students equal opportunities to succeed, it may also mean giving some students more encouragement in class or structuring your lessons in ways that promote greater participation from a wider number of students.

Students with a primary language other than English:

4.6 million English language learners are enrolled in public schools, which is almost 10% of all students.

Some instructional Strategies for English language learner:

• Slow down your speech and use shorter sentences, present tense of words, synonyms, examples, gestures, and demonstrations.
• Avoid expressions or sayings that are only common in the United States.
• Use as many mediums as possible to convey information: oral, written, videos, teacher demonstration, student demonstration, etc.
• Give students enough time to process questions.
• Use metaphors and imagery for cues.

Learning Styles

Some students enter college and thrive, others do not, for a whole host of reasons. Furthermore, students may not respond to your style teaching. One of the biggest challenges as a teacher is to provide a variety of learning experiences.

Psychologist Howard Gardner proposed that people have at least eight distinct intellectual capacities they use to approach problems and create products:

1. Verbal-linguistic intelligence draws on the individual’s language skills, oral and written, to express what’s on the person’s mind and to understand other people.
2. Logical-mathematical intelligence is a person’s ability to understand principles of some kind of causal system, like a scientist does, or to manipulate numbers, quantities, and operations, like a mathematician does.
3. Spatial intelligence refers to the ability to represent the spatial world internally in the mind, like a chess player or sculptor.
4. Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence is the capacity to use your whole body or parts of your body to solve a problem, make something, or put on some kind of production, like an athlete or performing artist.
5. Musical intelligence is the capacity to “think” in music and to be able to hear patterns and recognize, remember, and manipulate them.
6. Interpersonal intelligence is the ability to understand other people.
7. Intrapersonal intelligence refers to having an understanding of yourself and knowing your preferences, capabilities, and deficiencies.
8. Naturalist intelligence refers to the ability to discriminate among living things (plants and animals) and to have sensitivity towards features of the natural world.

Schools often emphasize curriculum that predominately targets linguistic and logical-mathematical tasks. Students who are strong in linguistic and logical-mathematical work are likely to succeed and feel achievement. This leaves many other students with strengths in these other areas to experience frustration or failure in the school environment.

Rather than labeling students as having a particular learning style, instruction should offer varied lessons that appeal to a range of strengths, abilities, and learning preferences over time.

Giving students choice can help. In an equipment proficiency, some students take diligent notes, so students draw visual representations of the lesson, other students focus on listening. There is also a large emphasis on the hands-on element to our work.

Teach instructional materials in multiple modes helps. Wiki articles, videos, spoken, demonstration, etc.

Gender Identity & Sexual Identity:

• Men and women identifying individuals are raised differently even within the same families, and society has different expectations of them.
• Non-binary, Transgender, agender, and intersex students face even further assumptions, stereotypes, discriminations, and prejudices.
• Treating gender and sexual identity equitably is often a struggle for teachers.
• It is a critical to establish and maintain a safe and supportive environment LGBTQIA+ students.
• Educators must validate and affirm multiple expressions of sexuality and gender.

What are some things that can be done as an instructor to validate and affirm these multiple expressions in Media workshops?

Cover pronouns, and if you don’t know what pronoun someone use, don’t assume.

The artists or subjects selected to show example work from can represent the LGBTQIA+ community.

What are some specific hurtles in media with gender?

According to San Diego State's Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film, women made up just 7 percent of all directors on the top 250 films, a 2 percent decline from 2015.  

What about the gendering of equipment?

Terminology will only change if folks put in the effort to make the transformation.

Socioeconomic Background:

Socioeconomic Status (SES) encompasses not just income but also educational attainment, financial security, and subjective perceptions of social status and social class. Socioeconomic status can contain quality of life attributes as well as the opportunities and privileges afforded to people within society. Poverty, specifically, is not a single factor but rather is characterized by multiple physical and psychosocial stressors. The school systems in low-SES communities are often under-resourced, negatively affecting students’ academic progress and outcomes.

The success rate of low-income students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics disciplines is much lower than that of students who do not come from underrepresented backgrounds.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau (2014), individuals within the top family income percentiles are 8 times more likely to obtain a bachelor’s degree by age 24 as compared to individuals from the lowest family income percentiles.

What does this mean for us? Clearly, we’re not going to ask students what socioeconomic bracket they fall into, but we can’t except students to come into school with the same levels of exposure to technology. Media technology is expensive. We can't just assume a baseline of media knowledge and it is critical to offer supplemental support to students that may not feel comfortable advocating for themselves.

Students with Disabilities:

11% of students in higher education have a disability.

Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, prohibit discrimination on the basis of disability. Practically every school district and higher education school in the United States is subject to one or both of these laws.

Higher education is required to provide appropriate academic adjustments as necessary to ensure that it does not discriminate on the basis of disability.

Can a college deny an admission because they have a disability?

No. If you meet the essential requirements for admission, a postsecondary school may not deny your admission simply because you have a disability.

Does an individual have to inform a postsecondary school that they have a disability?

No. But if you want the school to provide an academic adjustment, you must identify yourself as having a disability. Likewise, you should let the school know about your disability if you Academic adjustments may include auxiliary aids and services, as well as modifications to academic requirements as necessary to ensure equal educational opportunity. Examples of adjustments are: arranging for priority registration; reducing a course load; substituting one course for another; providing note takers, recording devices, sign language interpreters, extended time for testing, and equipping school computers with screen-reading, voice recognition, or other adaptive software or hardware.

What academic adjustments must a postsecondary school provide?

In providing an academic adjustment, your postsecondary school is not required to lower or substantially modify essential requirements. For example, although your school may be required to provide extended testing time, it is not required to change the substantive content of the test. In addition, your postsecondary school does not have to make adjustments that would fundamentally alter the nature of a service, program, or activity, or that would result in an undue financial or administrative burden. want to ensure that you are assigned to accessible facilities. In any event, your disclosure of a disability is always voluntary.

Do I have to prove that I have a disability to obtain an academic adjustment?

Generally, yes. Your school will probably require you to provide documentation showing that you have a current disability and need an academic adjustment.

When students enter the university setting, they are responsible for requesting accommodations through the appropriate office. This may be the first time the students will have had to advocate for themselves in this way. For first year students, this is probably a very different process than what they experienced in high school with an Individualized Education Program (IEP) or Section 504 plan. IEP is a document that is developed for each public-school child who needs special education. The IEP is created through a team effort, reviewed periodically.

What does this mean for our work?

Approach teaching students with disabilities just as you would with teaching other students: expect diversity, anticipate a range of abilities, and look for the particular strengths and learning profiles of each student.

How does working with technology and media equipment provide unique advantages and disadvantages when intersecting with students with disabilities?

Instructional material may be difficult for students with certain disabilities. For instance, when showing a video in class you need to consider your audience. Students with visual disabilities may have difficulty seeing non-verbalized actions; while those with disorders like photosensitive epilepsy may experience seizures with flashing lights or images; and those students with hearing loss may not be able to hear the accompanying audio. Using closed-captioning, providing electronic transcripts, describing on-screen action, allowing students to check the video out on their own, and outlining the role the video plays in the day’s lesson helps reduce the access barrier for students with disabilities and allows them the ability to be an active member of the class. Faculty need to inform staff prior to the workshop if their program has a student with a disability.