Attitudes of a sample of English, Maltese and German teachers towards media education

Abstract

Media education forms part of the National Minimum Curriculum of England, Malta and Germany. Teacher training courses differ greatly in how teachers are prepared to teach media education. In this paper we shall investigate the attitudes of a sample of teachers trained in England, Malta and in Germany towards their perceived importance of media education and the teachers’ preparedness to teach the subject. This preliminary study had a sample of 132 participants, 33 teachers from England, 47 from Germany and 52 teachers from Malta. The tool used to collect data was an online questionnaire. The results show that teachers taking part in this study were not given enough training, or any training at all to be able to teach media education with the result that they do not feel sufficiently prepared to teach the subject. It is suggested by the authors that media education becomes a compulsory component of the initial teacher training courses as well as advanced training for teachers.