Structural media education

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Structural media education is the draft of an educational concept based on Winfried Marotzki's structural educational theory. Together with Benjamin Jörissen , Marotzki wrote the book "Medienbildung - Eineführung" (2009), which combines classic educational theoretical considerations of modernity with discourses of image and film theory as well as international internet research.

The research program and courses in Structural Media Education were established by Winfried Marotzki and colleagues in the form of the consecutive BA and MA course in Media Education: Audiovisual Culture and Communication at Otto Von Guericke University Magdeburg (OVGU) .

When designing the concept, the authors assumed that socialization in the modern age is fundamentally and inevitably carried out through the media.

Educational theoretical foundations

The authors have developed an educational concept for structural educational theory / media education, which is defined in the distinction from the concept of “ training ” (as learning based on knowledge or on practical learning aimed at ability). Education in what is known as the postmodern present is not limited to the acquisition of a generally applicable, fixed canon. This bourgeois idea of ​​education is disrupted by historical experiences of crises, for example from industrialization and mass impoverishment , colonialism , world wars . These social crisis experiences made it inevitable to develop a concept of education beyond “education to come of age” that does not aim at an internalized canon, but at maturity and moral autonomy, at a relationship to the world and to oneself that can only come from the subject. The structural educational theory and structural media education are based in this sense on a formal educational theory, in distinction to the material educational theory. The aim of a formal educational theory does not lie in content, but in the form of the relationship with oneself and the world. The authors use Wilhelm von Humboldt's understanding of education and Wolfgang Klafki's educational concept to establish a reference to the present.

In addition, the authors establish the connection to the concept of contingency of the sociologist Anthony Giddens . Coincidences that occur in an individualized life cannot be given meaning through comprehensive orientation patterns.

Following Wilhelm Heitmeyer , the authors differentiate between three types of modern crisis:

  • Structural crises: structural change at the level of society as a whole, such as transformation processes and globalization phenomena
  • Regulatory crises: pluralization of values ​​and norms
  • Cohesion crises: phenomena that involve social recognition, belonging and education

Orientation systems of the relationship to the world and the self appear to be limited in time, modernity is characterized by discontinuity. As individualization progresses, the sense of the relationship to the world and the self must be generated more and more by the individual. These relationships can only be established through a reflexive relationship to oneself. The indeterminacy of the world can be countered with relativization, the provisional nature of one's own point of view, one's own worldview. The authors see the possibility of relativization in an “as if” acting self and world relationship, describable by the concept of tentativity. Accordingly, education can no longer mean converting indefiniteness into certainty. The creation of certainty, the development of the necessary factual and orientation knowledge, must enable and open up areas of indefiniteness.

The authors' formal understanding of education is illustrated by a conceptual separation of learning and education : For this they fall back on the classic learning model of Gregory Bateson . Based on this model, a distinction is made between four levels, two levels of learning (learning I and II) and two levels of education (education I and II):

  • Learning I : Stimulus-Response Patterns
  • Learning II : Stimulus-reaction-pattern considering the respective context
  • Education I : Construction principles of the relationship to oneself and the world and the associated decentering of one's own view of the world
  • Education II : Increasing self-reference as an observer of one's own self

Education in the knowledge society

The development of our society in relation to knowledge, to the “knowledge society”, must be taken into account in educational processes. The influence of scientific knowledge plays an influential role in almost all areas of life. The forms of knowledge, the forms of knowledge acquisition and the transfer of knowledge are influenced. Knowledge is the most important production factor alongside labor, capital and nature. The authors quote Helmut Willke , who speaks of a new type of worker, the knowledge worker. Employment is predominantly available at a high level of qualifications. In this respect, the concept of “lifelong learning” forms a livelihood that never stops, which is constantly expanding.

Dimensions of structural media education

The authors assume that in the encounter with the “new media” skills and attitudes “such as the willingness to tentatively explore the (still) unknown, encounters with (e.g. cultural) other and foreign, interest in acquiring new modes of interaction and samples ”are required. The “knowledge gap” has turned into a “participation hurdle” in the participation of media spaces. Media offer an indispensable world of their own. The Internet z. B. offers diverse possibilities for articulation and participation. The film offers a high degree of reflexive potential. Here "experiences of foreignness are staged, made comprehensible and reflective".

Based on Immanuel Kant , the authors formulate four basic reflective orientation options, the distinction of which is used to analyze educational potential in various media areas. They form the basis of structural media education:

  • Knowledge reference (reflection on perception, categories of knowledge, knowledge production and knowledge storage)
  • Action reference (reflection on options for action, education on responsibility, relationship of the individual to others, knowing action)
  • Transcendence and border reference (reflection on borders as the basic structure of education, body and technology, communication technology and biology)
  • Biographical reference (basic understanding of people, of people: biography via evaluation, order, structuring and orientation using a hierarchy of values; search and testing process, according to Wilhelm Dilthey : "Life experience")

The ability to articulate oneself and the ability to understand the articulations of others offer opportunities for social participation and discussion. Articulation in language, images or music can make educational processes visible; they have a high educational potential.

Film theory basics

The structural media formation captures the form structures of the media. Because the form of the medium determines the reflection possibilities that a medium can potentially offer or that are already inscribed in it. In this neo-formalist or structural conception, the structural media formation is part of McLuhan's media theory :

"Societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media through which people communicate with one another than by the content of communication"

as well as the Russian formalism . In this literary position, the form of the medium is given priority: “The form determines the content.” Analyzes based on this theory place formal building structures in the foreground

Structural film analysis

In their book "Media Education - An Introduction" Jörrissen / Marotzki give an example of structural media analysis for various media. The authors develop their analysis on the basis of film-language elements from the categories

The authors analyzed " Ararat " by Atom Egoyan for the medium of film . The focus of the analysis is the narrative structure of the film, which is staged on four levels. Thanks to this structure, the film offers space for reflection. From a narrative point of view, this is achieved by nesting the four levels, modalization and discursiveness. According to the authors' analysis, the film is a "clever arrangement of memory work."

In the application of film-motivated analyzes in relation to the dimensions of knowledge, action, limit, biography, the following films are examined more closely, among others:

In the dimension of “audiovisual memory images”, memory as an educational dimension, the authors provide a deeper insight into the possibility of structural analysis. The authors analyze two films as examples. " Der Spiegel " (1975) by Andrei Tarkovsky is subjected to a detailed analysis . “ Memento ” (2000) by Christopher Nolan is mentioned as a current example.

Visual media - the medium of image

For some years now, the connection between imagery and education has increasingly come to the fore in discussions based on educational theory. It is about recalling the reflexive intrinsic value of images, arising from the iconic difference between material and meaningful aspects of the image, also called ontological difference . A picture content / picture object can only appear with a material on which it is located. The media side is the image carrier here. The image carrier is required for the presentation of the image object without being assigned any meaning on this level. The meaning of the picture is localized on the inner picture level of the picture object. Meaning is attributed to the decoding of the image content, this can vary depending on the context and perspective, but not arbitrarily. The sense defines how a picture object should be used as a symbol. But the picture object determines what its meaning can be. The educational theory and methodological-methodological consequence of this: images have a reflexive potential in and of themselves, and the educational theory analysis of visual objects necessarily starts with the image objects themselves. Photography is an ideal medium for documentation. Every day, enormous amounts of documentary images are shown in various media and with them references to self and the world are conveyed and shown. Initially associated with an absolute idea of ​​authenticity and the status of the knowledge medium - photography as a representation of reality - the break occurred with the introduction of image processing software and the associated image manipulation. From an epistemological point of view, the consequence is a reduction in certain determinations, along with the increased need for reflexive strategies of justification.

A model essentially developed by Erwin Panofsky is used as a method for the educational-theoretical-structural image interpretation . It contains 4 levels of image interpretation:

  1. Description of the objects
    • purely descriptive identification of the immediately visible picture objects (objects)
    • Naming of phenomena, objects, people, events
    • strict reflexive control of the cultural content
  2. Order of objects (iconolographic analysis)
    a. Generation of meaning hypotheses
    • Deciphering the conventional meaning of pictorial objects (takes place in a culture variant)
    • Establishing the connection and order of things and people
    • Determination of the iconographic subject (often the caption)
    • Introduction of historical and cultural modes of perception and thematisation for reflection
    • Elaboration of the cultural framing with spatiotemporal positioning of the image
    b. Construction of contexts of meaning
    • narrative generation of the context of meaning
    • Creation of the picture story by creating cultural meanings and meaningful connections
  3. Staging of the objects (mise-en-scène)
    • Interpretation of the sense of the picture as internal, excluding all non-figurative illustrations by means of the following analysis aspects:
    • Setting (landscape, spaces, backgrounds, etc.)
    • Color and light
    • Staging (setting sizes, perspective and composition)
  4. educational theory analysis of self and world references
    • Working out the social content
    • Decryption of the self and world reference with the underlying coordinates
    • Deciphering the way of articulating the social and cultural in the picture in terms of a time diagnosis from the perspective of an individual

New articulation and participation spaces of the Internet

With the introduction of the Internet in 1991 and its further development into a multimedia, interactive and, with Web2.0, participatory medium, the classic articulation options have acquired new communicative, social and cultural qualities. With the development of the Internet into a deliberative cultural space, a new public space has emerged with new hopes and opportunities, but also dangers. As early as 1996, John Perry Barlow defended himself against increasing censorship of the Internet with his Internet manifest "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace". He justifies this with an irreconcilable difference between traditional state systems and cyberspace. This difference is based on:

  • the naturalness of cyberspace - it grew out of the collective actions of its members and not out of laws
  • Virtuality of cyberspace - a place beyond territorial borders
  • Bodilessness within the virtual world - therefore withdrawal of the classical legal concept based on the material world
  • Definition of cyberspace as a civilization of the mind - consisting of thinking and communication with the need for freedom of unregulated expression

The internet, meanwhile a new (trans) cultural space, has produced partly decentralized, difficult to control, partly centralized, institutionalized and commercialized forms of public and thus advanced to the central socialization medium. It offers space for specifically media subcultures to emerge. With the new media, a transformation from a culture for everyone into a culture for everyone has become possible; one also speaks of transculturality . People around the world can come into contact with one another, bring their own cultures to the table, and this creates a mutual influence, the culture of origin and the media subculture overlap. A new cultural meeting place has emerged. The decision whether to appear publicly or privately is up to the respective person or institution.

Based on this, the authors present the aspects of the Internet in the four orientation dimensions of knowledge, action, limit, and biography.

review

The concept of structural media education is being discussed critically , especially within media education . In their review, Kai-Uwe Hugger and Ilone Cwielong describe the introductory volume as "an important contribution to the discussion on the theoretical and conceptual determination of the position of media education", which represents a "more in-depth, systematic framework" for the otherwise poorly used term media education. What is criticized here, however, is the lack of reference to the relationship between media education and other, established concepts of media education such as the concept of media literacy . This comparison in particular has evidently provoked a dispute in parts of the scientific community. The reviewers also miss an inclusion of the professional practice of media education. Conclusions for "concrete (media) educational action with children, adolescents or adults" could therefore not be found. Something similar can be found in the review by Sarah Wüst: she misses "knowledge and action reference" as well as "concise conclusions".

literature

  • Benjamin Jörissen & Winfried Marotzki: Media Education. An introduction. Julius Klinkhardt, Bad Heilbrunn 2009, ISBN 978-3-8252-3189-7

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jörissen / Marotzki 2008, 11
  2. ↑ Giddens 1996
  3. ↑ cf. Stehr 1994, 16
  4. ↑ Jörissen / Marotzki 2008, 27
  5. ↑ ibid., 30
  6. ↑ ibid., 30
  7. ↑ Kant 1800, 448
  8. ↑ cf. Dilthey 1907, 74
  9. ↑ Jung 2005, 126
  10. ↑ McLuhan 1976, 176
  11. ↑ Jörissen / Marotzki 2008, 42
  12. ↑ cf. Bordwell / Thompson 2008
  13. ^ Jörissen / Marotzki 2008, 57
  14. ↑ Lambert Wiesing: Artificial Presence. Studies on the Philosophy of the Image . Suhrkamp, ​​Berlin 2005, p. 67. For Wiesing see also web links
  15. ↑ http://editions-hache.com/essais/barlow/barlow1.html?nu=oui
  16. ↑ cf. PDF
  17. ↑ Discussion on article by Bernd Schorb in merz 05/2009 [1]
  18. ↑ Discussion on article by Dieter Spanhel in merz 01/2010 [2]