Table 1. The Number of Teachers, their Age and Gender

The analysis of Table 2 shows that the majority of teachers believe in the necessity of media education of pupils in the form of a mandatory subject (63,16%) or as an elective (34,84%). The same is true concerning the obligatory (56,14%) or elective (21,05%) media education for university students. 57,89% of the teachers questioned (83,33% of men and 46,15% of women) have also expressed their support of the introduction of the new pedagogical Major “Media Education” in higher education institutions. In addition, the mandatory media education for pupils/students and the suggestion for Major in “Media Education” have gained the strongest support in the age group of teachers between 31 and 40 years (83,33% of voices in all questions).

The teachers that took part in our project, think that media education of pupils/students should be integrated into the mandatory courses (45,61% without any noticeable gender or age differences), autonomous (24,56% without any major gender or age differences as well), or the combination of both (50,88%).

Only 14,03% of the teachers oppose media education for pupils claiming its uselessness. There are 3 times more of the women’s voices here then of the men’s, and older generation predominates (in the age group between 21 and 30 years there is no single person who is against media education for schoolchildren).

However, even the teachers’ opposition changes its point of view when it comes to the status of media education for university-level students. Just 3,51% of the teachers reject it. By the way, this group consists entirely of women older than 50 years, who are probably too conservative to change their traditional opinion about the teaching process.

In general, more than 75% of the teachers in this or another way do support media education for pupils and students, and 58% of them believe that it is high time to introduce the new area of expertise for universities - “Media Education”. It proves the point that the intense development of the media evokes the adequate reaction of Russian pedagogues - they realize that life in the world of IT s and mass communication boom is demanding media literacy to the extent not less than it is demanding the traditional literacy.

It seems interesting to me to compare several positions of Table 2 with the results of the questionnaire of 26 experts in media education around the world (media educators from 10 different countries participated, such as O.Baranov, R.Cornell, A.Korochensky, B.MacMahon, J.Pungente, S.Penzin, L.Roser, K.Tyner, E.Yakushina, and others) that I conducted for UNESCO in 2003 [Fedorov, 2003]. The difference in the opinions of teachers and experts featured most strongly in their attitude to the autonomous media education. In contrast to 25,64% of Russian schoolteachers, only 7,69% of the experts in the field think that media literacy should be taught in separate courses/lessons. There is no significant difference between the support for the integrated media education: 46,15% of Russian teachers vs. 30,77% of the experts. The number of advocates of the combination of the integrated and autonomous media education in these two groups is even closer: 53,85% of teachers compared to 61,54% of the experts. On the whole, majority of Russian teachers and international experts agree on the point that the most promising way for the development of modern media education is the union of autonomous and integrated lessons with schoolchildren and students.

The results of the teachers’ answers to the questions about their attitude to main aims of media education are systematized in Table 3.