Estonian schools have some experiences with teaching production
of written megia genres, but very limited understanding of what
actually is media literacy. Although since 2002 Media education has
been a cross-curricular theme in Estonian national curricula, there
has been no constructive development towards understanding media
literacy. I suggest that the reasons of current situation are
following:
- Teachers have no cognitive model of media literacy, and
therefore they tend to see media education as extra load;
- Curricula are overloaded and assessment is oriented on factual
knowledge, not on critical reading skills;
- Teachers do not have skills of critical reading, nor the
methodology to teach critical reading;
- Media literacy is narrowly understood as producing news stories
or as ability to use internet;
- School culture does not support cooperation of teachers
- Generation gaps (teachers of different age, teachers and pupils)
in the field of media usage is huge; different generations live in
different media environment.
I suggest that one of the ways for the effective improvement is to
overview the teacher's pre-service programs from the point of view
of media literacy, and actively increase the elements of critical
media usage and integrating different subjects.
Key words: media literacy, media education, national curricula