Table 3. Teachers’ Opinions about their Attitude to Main Aims of Media Education

Age/gender of teachers	Media Educational Aims
Encouraging the development of the aesthetic taste, perception, evaluation of the aesthetic value of a media text, appreciation of masterpieces of media culturecultureмедиакультуры	Development of the critical thinking and critical autonomy of the personality towards media texts.	Protection from the harmful influences of media.	Satisfaction of different needs of the audiences	Teaching practical work with media technology	Development of the audiences’ skills for political, ideological analysis of different aspects of media.	Development of the skills of perception, understanding and analysis of media language.	Development of the audiences’ skills for the analysis of media texts in the broad cultural and social contexts.	Preparing young people for living in the democratic society.	Development of the communicative skills	Development of the ability for self-expression with the help of media technology, creation of media texts.	Teaching and learning the knowledge about the history of media, media culture	Transmittance of the knowledge about the theory of media, media culture	Development of the skills for the analysis of different aspects of media, media culture in terms of moral values, and psychology.
Number of teachers (in %) who chose this variant of an answer
Age 21-30 total	60,00	100,0	20,00	40,00	30,00	50,00	20,00	60,00	10,00	40,00	0,00	20,00	20,00	30,00
21-30 /men	33,33	100,0	33,33	33,33	0,00	66,67	0,00	66,67	0,00	100,0	0,00	40,00	20,00	60,00
21-30/women	71,43	100,0	14,28	42,86	42,86	42,86	28,57	57,14	14,28	14,28	0,00	28,57	14,28	42,86
Age 31-40 total	58,33	41,67	41,67	33,33	58,33	58,33	41,67	41,67	33,33	25,00	16,67	8,33	8,33	16,67
21-30 /men	50,00	75,00	25,00	25,00	50,00	75,00	25,00	50,00	25,00	50,00	25,00	0,00	0,00	25,00
21-30 /women	62,50	37,50	50,00	37,50	62,50	50,00	50,00	37,50	37,50	25,00	12,50	12,50	12,50	12,50
Age 41-50 total	45,45	72,73	36,36	27,27	27,27	36,36	63,64	36,36	45,45	18,18	45,45	9,10	0,00	27,27
41-50 /men	25,00	50,00	25,00	25,00	50,00	25,00	75,00	25,00	75,00	50,00	50,00	25,00	0,00	0,00
41-50/ women	57,14	85,71	42,86	28,57	28,57	42,86	57,14	42,86	28,57	0,00	42,86	0,00	0,00	42,86
Age 51-60 total	66,67	33,33	33,33	33,33	50,00	58,33	25,00	50,00	50,00	33,33	16,67	8,33	8,33	41,67
51-60/men	60,00	40,00	20,00	40,00	40,00	40,00	20,00	60,00	80,00	40,00	20,00	20,00	0,00	40,00
51-60/women	71,43	28,57	42,86	28,57	57,14	71,43	28,57	42,86	28,57	28,57	14,28	0,00	14,28	42,86
Age 61-70 total	58,33	66,67	41,67	33,33	41,67	50,00	33,33	33,33	33,33	25,00	8,33	25,00	0,00	16,67
61-70/men	100,0	50,00	50,00	0,00	50,00	50,00	0,00	0,00	0,00	0,00	0,00	0,00	0,00	0,00
61-70/women	50,00	70,00	40,00	40,00	40,00	50,00	40,00	40,00	40,00	30,00	10,00	30,00	0,00	20,00
All age groups/total	57,89	63,16	35,09	33,33	43,86	50,88	36,84	43,86	35,09	29,82	17,54	14,03	7,02	26,31
All age groups/ men	50,00	61,11	27,78	27,78	38,89	50,00	27,78	44,44	44,44	50,00	22,22	11,11	5,55	16,67
All age groups/ women	61,54	64,10	38,46	35,90	46,15	51,28	41,02	43,59	30,77	20,51	15,38	15,38	7,69	30,77

The analysis of the data of Table 3 leads us to the conclusion that the teachers support the following theories of media education (in descending order):

1.Development of the critical thinking ( the main aim is to develop the critical thinking, personality’s autonomy towards the media/media texts)- 63,16% (without significant gender differentiation, but with the dominance of younger generation of teachers);

2.Aesthetic (the main goals are to develop the “good” aesthetic perception, taste, abilities for the efficient evaluation of the aesthetic quality of a media text, for understanding of media texts; propaganda of the masterpieces of media culture)- 57, 89% (there are about 11% more of women’s voices here than men’s);

3.Ideological (the main aim is the development of the skills for political, ideological analysis of different aspects of media/media culture) – 50, 88%.

4.Cultural Studies (the main aim is to develop the audiences’ skills for the analysis of media texts in the broad cultural, and social context) – 43, 86%;

5.Practical (the main goal is to teach the audience practical skills of operating media technology) – 43, 86%;

6.Semiotic (the main aim is the development of the audiences’ skills for perception, understanding and analysis of the media language) – 36, 84% (there are 14% more of female than male voices);

7.Inoculatory/Protectionist (the main aim to protect the audience from the harmful affects of media) - 35, 09% (women’s votes dominate by 11%);

8.Development of the democratic thinking ( the main goal is to prepare young people for living in the democratic society with the help of media/ media culture)- 35, 09% (there are 14% of men’s voices, than women’s);

9.Satisfaction of the audience’s needs- 33, 33% (the main aim is to satisfy the needs of the audience in the area of media/ media culture).

Herewith, teachers consider the following to be important: development of the skills for moral, psychological analysis of different aspects of media, media culture (26, 31%, the women’s voices are twice as many as the men’s); communicative abilities (29, 82%, men’s voices are twice as many as the women’s); skills to self expression through media, creation of media texts (17, 54%). Such objectives as the knowledge about the history of media/ media culture (14, 03) and theory of media and media culture (7, 02%) got the smallest rating, though in the latter case it is not quite clear how one can develop, for instance, critical thinking of the audience or teach about the media language without reliance on the theories of media.

Comparison of these data and the results of the questionnaire of the international expert group [Fedorov, 2003] shows that the opinions of Russian teachers are close to those of the experts’ in many cases: the teachers (though the percentage is smaller) place the aim of the development of critical thinking on the top, as well as the experts (84, 61% of experts, 63, 16% of teachers). The difference in attitude towards aesthetic (57, 89% of the teachers, 46, 15% of the experts), ideological (50, 88% of the teachers, 38, 46% of the experts), practical (43, 86% of the teachers, 50% of the experts) and “consumerism” (33, 33% of the teachers, 30, 77% of the experts) objectives of media education is not crucial, as you can see from the figures above.

Yet the comparison with the experts’ rating of the objectives reveals that Russian teachers tend to over estimate the role of “protectionist” (35, 09% of the teachers vs. 15, 38 % of the experts) objectives of media education, to the detriment of the semiotic and cultural studies aims, which got 57 to 70 % of the experts’ votes.

Almost twice less rating was made by such a popular with the experts (61, 89%) category as the development of the critical thinking. The same is true for the communicative aim (57, 34% of the experts vs. only 29, 82% of the teachers) and for the development of the skills for self-expression through media (53, 85% of experts, 17, 54% of teachers).

The importance of the knowledge about the history and theory of media/ media culture turned out to be also underestimated by the teachers, compared to the expert group. There are 37 to 48% of supporters of these aspects among the experts, while only 7 to 14% among teachers.

All of this leads us to a conclusion that in spite of the general support given by the experts and the teachers to the priority of the development of critical thinking on the material of media culture, there is no sufficient understanding among the in-service Russian teachers of the importance of several other media educational objectives. For example, the potential of the media education lessons aimed at the development of the democratic thinking of the audience are clearly estimated too low, while the weight of the protectionist objectives is exaggerated.

So, the figures of Table 3 offer some idea of the “theoretical” background which influences the teacher’s work. However, we needed to find out, to what extent the teachers really implement elements of media education at their classes. The results of the answers are presented in Table 4.

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Table 1. The Number of Teachers, their Age and Gender	\|	Table 4. Teachers’ Use of Media Education Elements in Schools

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