- The Toolkit is a multimedia product aimed at training teachers about media and intercultural education to support acts of democratic citizenship at school and in society at large. It consists of four intertwined components, namely a Theoretical introduction providing the pedagogical background of the toolkit, that is the Media and Intercultural Framework (MIEF)
- Guidelines to design inclusive media education activities, based on three key concepts: Understanding media and cultures
Expression of their own voices in multicultural contexts
Engagement in multicultural societies through media - Six Learning Scenarios on media and intercultural education, reflecting the above mentioned guidelines and including teaching and learning resources
- An Educational Documentary to explain how media education can be taught in intercultural contexts facilitating understanding, expression and engagement. It is composed of three video-capsules, each one dedicated to one of the key concepts. The video-capsules document three educational experiences highlighting how the key concepts can be implemented in educational practice.
How to use the toolkit ?
Teachers can use the toolkit in three different ways, specifically as a self-training tool, as a teaching resource and as a design tool.
The toolkit can be used as a self-training tool by exploring its four components. From this perspective the Learning Scenarios and the educational documentary can be read and observed bearing in mind the MEET guidelines to understand how principles and recommendations can be put into practice.
The toolkit can also represent a teaching resource because teachers can adopt the Learning Scenarios (or parts of them) in their classroom, using the worksheets and the multimedia content (e.g. images) that they include.
The toolkit can also inform the (re)design of the media education activities that teachers would like to propose to their students. In this sense, teachers can design new Learning Scenarios on the basis of the guidelines or they can use the guidelines to re-design their existing Learning Scenarios in order to adapt them to their students and contexts.
Why use the toolkit ?
Let’s hear from teachers….
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- “[…] classroom activities represented a reason for further reflection and a stimulus to continuously re-address the teaching modalities. This provided remarkable inputs to re-design teaching to meet cultures and promote the inclusion of diversity” (Teacher, Italy)
- “When students identified with different roles (during the role play), they developed a feeling of empathy, especially towards Roma, and found out that they are a minority, which is a target of prejudices and stereotypes” (Teacher, Slovenia)
- “I got concrete experience of methods, production of a podcast, creation of campaigns, media contributions…” (Teacher, Slovenia)
- “The moment of the students’ interviews in the city centre was definitely a strength, a very touching moment that went far beyond our expectations” (Teacher, Italy)
- “Students showed a lively interest when they were making their own media products” (Teachers’ post-survey) (Teacher, Germany)
- “Thanks to this experience I improved my ability to teach media education in intercultural contexts” (Teacher, Italy)
- “The approach adopted was informative, participatory, and collaborative. It guided students in the analysis of fake news, stimulating them to question the way they read and understand news” (Teacher, Italy)
Theoretical introduction
This document introduces the Media and Intercultural Education Framework (MIEF), which provides the pedagogical background for the Learning Scenarios. MIEF is a theoretical tool developed to support teachers to identify relevant competences for teaching media education in intercultural contexts, as well as to design inclusive classroom activities. It combines the research traditions of media literacy and intercultural education. Both traditions entail the promotion of democratic practices of citizenship.
Guidelines for teachers
This document presents a set of Guidelines aimed at supporting teachers in the design of inclusive and situated media education activities. They are rooted in the Universal Design for Learning Guidelines which have been re-interpreted through the lens of socio-cultural theories of learning. From this perspective, MEET guidelines represent an attempt to conjugate media literacy education with inclusive strategies for teaching and learning to ensure equity and respect for diversity. MEET guidelines for inclusive and situated learning are based on the three main concepts, that is Understanding, Expression and Engagement.
Understanding media and cultures
The video capsule focuses on how media education can facilitate students’ understanding of media and intercultural relations. Firstly, it shows how analysing in small groups video games and movies representing different social groups, including migrants and refugees, can lead students to recognise the ideological and linguistic aspects of media representations, as well as to tackle the topic of human rights in contemporary society. Furthermore, the video illustrates how students’ involvement in the design of video games addressing the issues of equal rights can also contribute to their critical understanding of media representations and social justice.
Engaging in multicultural societies through the media
The video focuses on how students’ engagement through the media in intercultural communities can be favoured in the context of their classroom and school. Initially, it shows how a simple game on students’ identities can improve students’ awareness of their multiple identities as well as of the multicultural condition of their classroom. Moreover, the video documents how the pedagogical strategy of role play can be positively adopted to address the topic of stereotypes about ethnic minorities in the media and in the wider society. Finally, it shows how the production of a radio podcast on diversity and human rights can actually become an opportunity for students to contribute actively to the intercultural community building process in their classroom and school.
Expressing their own voices in multicultural contexts
The video capsule focuses on how to facilitate students’ expression through the media in order to make them able to address creatively and reflexively relevant cultural and social issues for contemporary societies. Firstly, it shows how students can become familiar with audio-visual narratives and the topic of stereotyping both through inspiring examples of videos and a trial and error process accompanied with a formative evaluation by teachers and peers. Hence, it illustrates how the process of video production, though simple, can bring students to express their voices about migration issues, also taking into account their own experiences of – and/or feelings about – migration.
How to MEETolerance
Media Education for Equity and Tolerance
Description and aims of MEET
“MEET, Media Education for Equity and Tolerance” (2016-2018) is a project funded by the European Commission’s Erasmus+ Programme.
MEET aims at promoting a critical and inter-cultural understanding as well as an aware use of media among young citizens in multicultural public schools and democratic societies.
It mainly addresses economically and socially disadvantaged youth (aged 13-19), including migrants and refugees, by engaging them and their teachers in an action research process to co-design and develop inter-cultural media education practices inspired by principles of equity, tolerance, social justice and solidarity.
In this respect, MEET can be seen as an educational (or pedagogical) challenge to a broader culture of exclusion, exclusivism and discrimination that nowadays seems to permeate many political discourses and media representations, as well as the widespread neo-liberal reconfiguration of educational provision.
Finally, the project intends to advocate Media Education as a means to support social inclusion/justice among different sections of the public and through several dissemination tools, from the production of an educational documentary to the spreading of policy recommendations, digital toolkits and scientific papers on media and citizenship education.
Download the leaflet of the project in English, French, German, Italian or Slovenian (pdf).
Main activities of the project are:
- Mapping of local, national and European policies on citizenship, media and inter-cultural education
- Selection and involvement of research participants in disadvantaged areas (about 150 students, 12 teachers and 6 cultural mediators)
- Adaptation and re/co-design of existing media education practices to address students at risk of social exclusion in inter-cultural contexts
- Production, testing and evaluation of 6 “learning scenarios” based on a critical literacy approach in three Countries (Germany, Italy and Slovenia)
- Multimedia documentation of classroom activities aimed at producing an educational documentary on teaching and learning media literacy in inter-cultural contexts
- Delivery of MEET’s learning scenario as Open Educational Resources available even after the end of the project
- Definition of guidelines for teachers on how to teach about media in inter-cultural contexts to support democratic citizenship and social inclusion
- Networking of local, national and international bodies dealing with education, media literacy and intercultural relations
- Advocacy of Media Education in school – as an inclusive and participatory educational practice – among teachers, policy makers and other relevant stakeholders
