Policy Futures in Education

ISSN 1478-2103

Volume 5 Number 1 2007

CONTENTS [click on author's name for abstract and full text]

Theme: Media and Policy in Education
Guest Editors: MICHELLE STACK & MEGAN BOLER

Michelle Stack & Megan Boler. Introduction, pages 1‑16 VIEW FULL TEXT doi: 10.2304/pfie.2007.5.1.1
Makram Khoury-Machool. Palestinian Youth and Political Activism: the emerging Internet culture and new modes of resistance, pages 17‑36
Kenneth Saltman. Gambling with the Future of Public Education: risk, discipline, and the moralizing of educational politics in corporate media, pages 37‑49
Carmen Luke. As Seen on TV or Was that My Phone? New Media Literacy, pages 50‑58
Douglas Kellner & Jeff Share. Critical Media Literacy: crucial policy choices for a twenty-first-century democracy, pages 59‑69
Paul Warmington & Roger Murphy. ‘Read All about It!’ UK News Media Coverage of A-level Results, pages 70‑83
Laura Pinto, Megan Boler & Trevor Norris. Literacy is Just Reading and Writing, Isn’t It? The Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test and its Press Coverage, pages 84‑99
Michelle Stack. Representing School Success and Failure: media coverage of international tests, pages 100‑110

BOOK REVIEW VIEW FULL TEXT
Building Knowledge Cultures: education and development in the age of knowledge capitalism (Michael A. Peters with A.C.[Tina] Besley), reviewed by Xavier Rambla & Aina Tarabini, pages 111‑114
doi: 10.2304/pfie.2007.5.1.111

Palestinian Youth and Political Activism: the emerging Internet culture and new modes of resistance

MAKRAM KHOURY-MACHOOL Cambridge, United Kingdom

doi: 10.2304/pfie.2007.5.1.17

The information technology revolution and the introduction of the Internet in the last decade have transformed the life of individuals and groups across the globe. One unique example of the remarkable impact of this new medium on the life of a marginalised society is the impact of the Internet on the life of Palestinians. The author demonstrates that, since the outbreak of the second Palestinian Intifada on 28 September 2000, and the drop of the average income of Palestinian households living in the 1967 Palestinian territories, a sharp increase in the number of Palestinian Internet users, especially youths, has been reported through connectivity in schools, universities and cafes. In universities, a method of instruction has been developed to maintain higher education, since students frequently cannot reach the campus due to conditions of siege. The author also argues that, due to the pertinent socio-political conditions of Palestinian youths and students under occupation, the Internet now acts as a medium between teachers and students, as well as a tool for intense politicisation and cyber-resistance. With constant Internet access possible for over 25% of the Palestinian population, a new youth culture has emerged amongst Palestinians, in particular at schools and universities. By organising relations between teachers, students and the youth in general, as well as with various sectors of the Palestinian population, the Internet now acts as a broad and collective front for national peaceful political resistance, and is one of the most central elements of everyday life. It is to be noted that this phenomenon should be seen in the specific socio-political, economic and cultural context of the Palestinians, unconnected to the introduction of the Internet in the broader Arab world. It should also be noted that, as a result, Palestinians are now the largest group of users of the Internet in the Arab world.

Gambling with the Future of Public Education: risk, discipline, and the moralizing of educational politics in corporate media

KENNETH SALTMAN DePaul University, Chicago, USA

doi: 10.2304/pfie.2007.5.1.37

This article discusses how representations of individual discipline and risk-taking in mass media inform the broader public discourses about public education and the public sector generally. Such representations and narratives about individual discipline and risk-taking often function in mass media as moral imperatives of consumer culture. Such moral imperatives of consumer culture not only replace a civic morality of political engagement more consistent with democratic ideals and participatory culture but also typify and even stimulate the shifting of politics onto a moral register and language that has characterized neo-liberal ideology, third way post-politics, and that informs contemporary US politics, especially evident during the ‘War on Terror.’ The article discusses these matters through the media spectacle of a Utah woman who permanently tattooed an advertisement for a casino on her face to pay for her son’s private school tuition and through the gambling problem of former Secretary of Education and educational entrepreneur William Bennett.

As Seen on TV or Was that My Phone? New Media Literacy

CARMEN LUKE University of Queensland, Australia

doi: 10.2304/pfie.2007.5.1.50

Media literacy studies traditionally have been the domain of the English and Language Arts classrooms. Cultural studies has not made significant inroads into school-based media studies although, like media studies, it too is concerned with the politics of image/text representations. Information literacy, which also passes as computer or technology literacy, has focused principally on the teaching of operational ‘how-to’ skills. In the last decade, consumers have abandoned newspapers, magazines and network television en masse in favour of cable and Internet news and entertainment sources. Fast news and 24/7 coverage – of 9/11, the US presidential 2004 campaign, world soccer, the 2003 Bali bombings, or the Boxing Day 2004 tsunami in South-east Asia – are global spectacles watched by billions. Given the rapid drift towards media convergence, and consumer shifts from ‘old’ to ‘new’ media, it is argued that media literacy studies, cultural studies, information or technology studies can no longer be taught independently of each other.

Critical Media Literacy: crucial policy choices for a twenty-first-century democracy

DOUGLAS KELLNER & JEFF SHARE University of California-Los Angeles, USA

doi: 10.2304/pfie.2007.5.1.59

The concept of critical media literacy expands the notion of literacy to include different forms of mass communication and popular culture, as well as deepens the potential of literacy education to critically analyze relationships between media and audiences, information and power. The authors argue that critical media literacy is crucial for participatory democracy in the twenty-first century, and that the only progressive option that exists is how to teach it, not whether to teach it. The article, first, explores the theoretical underpinnings of critical media literacy and demonstrates examples from community-based after school programs and an inner-city elementary school that received a federal grant to integrate media literacy and the arts into the curriculum. A multiperspectival approach addressing issues of gender, race, class and power is used to explore the interconnections of media literacy with cultural studies and critical pedagogy. It is argued that alternative media production must engage students to challenge the master narratives and the systems that make them appear natural. The article then explores the public policy options open to implementing a critical media literacy program. Focusing on media literacy policy in the USA, different approaches commonly used for teaching media literacy are explored and a hybrid critical media literacy framework is proposed. In this day and age of standardized high-stakes testing and corporate solicitations in public education, radical democracy depends on a Deweyan reconceptualization of literacy and the role of education in society. The authors conclude that on the public policy level critical media literacy must reframe our understanding of literacy so that these ideas become integrated across the curriculum at all levels from pre-school to university.

‘Read All about It!’ UK News Media Coverage of A-level Results

PAUL WARMINGTON University of Birmingham, United Kingdom
ROGER MURPHY University of Nottingham, United Kingdom

doi: 10.2304/pfie.2007.5.1.70

News coverage of public examination results in the United Kingdom has escalated in recent years. The years 2002 and 2003, in particular, witnessed a bitter media debate over A-level results. Yet, while educationalists often deride the quality of the annual examination debate, there has been minimal research into the specific ways in which exam news issues are constructed by news media. This article discusses the critical findings of an interdisciplinary study, conducted by education and media specialists, of print and broadcast news coverage of the publication of A-level results in August 2002 and 2003. The article focuses upon three particular elements: the distribution of different headline categories and themes; the structural, narrative and presentation templates in which A-level news items were embedded, and the discursive features that have characterised the dominant template for A-level news coverage: the claim that examination standards are ‘falling’. The article concludes by briefly considering some of the broader questions about the relationship between the education sector and news media in the United Kingdom, reflecting upon the ritualistic and polarised nature of coverage, the subtext of anxieties over the ‘massification’ of post-compulsory education and the readiness (or not) of educationalists to engage in a debate being played out for increasingly high stakes.

Literacy is Just Reading and Writing, Isn’t It? The Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test and Its Press Coverage

LAURA PINTO, MEGAN BOLER & TREVOR NORRIS Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Canada

doi: 10.2304/pfie.2007.5.1.84

This article examines how the public discourse of print news media defines and shapes the representation of the Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test (OSSLT) based on coverage in three primary newspapers between 1998 and 2004. The data were analysed using qualitative and quantitative measures to identify types of coverage, themes, and inclusion/exclusion of voices. The analysis, which is framed by discourse about conceptions of literacy relating to Dewey’s democratic vision for the press, suggests some disappointments on the measure of democratic representation and participation. The article concludes that, if the media is to represent the diversity of voices and provide a wide range of views so as to fulfil its democratic responsibility as envisioned by Dewey, a wider debate over representations of literacy must occur and more perspectives and voices must be included in newspaper coverage.

Representing School Success and Failure: media coverage of international tests

MICHELLE STACK University of British Columbia, Canada

doi: 10.2304/pfie.2007.5.1.100

It is through the media that audiences come to learn about the apparent successes and failure of the education system. Despite this power, the connection of the media to educational leadership and policy making is often given little attention in determining the forces at play in evaluating what happens in schools. Using a critical discourse analysis of media coverage concerning the 1999 Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and the 2000 and 2003 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the author argues that the media interpreted these test results in concert with business and electoral elites as a ‘failure of marginalized students,’ rather than a failure of society to address systemic discrimination. The media coverage of such failures presents solutions provided by business and government as common sense. Consequently, alternative framings, for example, as to what a successful education system would look like to people who are judged school failures based on the tests are never sought. There is also no discussion of the ways in which the PISA and TIMSS tests are constructed to favor the knowledge of dominant interests and ignore that which is outside this realm.

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