Russian Teachers’ Attitudes to the Problem of Media Education of Pupils and University Students

-deals with all communication media and includes the printed word and graphics, the sound, the still as well as the moving image, delivered on any kind of technology;

-enables people to gain understanding of the communication media used in their society and the way they operate and to acquire skills using these media to communicate with others;

-ensure that people learn how to

* analyse, critically reflect upon and create media texts;

* identify the sources of media texts, their political, social, commercial and/or cultural interests, and their contexts;

* interpret the messages and values offered by the media;

* select appropriate media for communicating their own messages or stories and for reaching their intended audience;

* gain or demand access to media for both reception and production.

Media education is part of basic entitlement of every citizen, in every country in the world, to freedom of expression and the right to information and is instrumental in building and sustaining democracy” [Recommendations Addressed to the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization UNESCO, 1999, pp.273-274].

Therefore, media education in the modern world can be described as the process of the development of personality with the help of and on the material of media, aimed at the shaping of culture of the interaction with media, development of the creative, communicative skills, critical thinking, perception, interpretation, analysis and evaluation of media texts, teaching different forms of self-expression using technology. Media literacy, as an outcome of this process, helps a person to actively use opportunities of the information field provided by the television, radio, video, film, press and Internet [Fedorov, 2001, p.8].

The year 2002 was marked by the important event in the history of the Russian media education movement. The academic-methodical institution of the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation has registered the new university-level specialization (Minor) “Media Education” (03.13.30) within the education area. In other words, for the first time in its history media education in Russia has gained an official status.

However are the Russian teachers ready for the implementation of the media education ideas? What is their general attitude to the problem of media education in school and university? What objectives are the most important for them? To what extent do they use media education elements in their lessons?

These are the questions that we tried to answer by the questioning of 57 teachers of secondary schools (schools NN 12, 27, 36, 37, 38 and others) in Taganrog, Russia. The information on age and gender of the teachers is in the Table 1.