Study: Media pedagogy as theory and practice of media education

The courses offered by the Chair of Media Education with a focus on media education are centrally anchored in the teacher training programs at TU Dresden and serve the media education components.

The didactic foundations of our courses are formed by the draft for basic media education for all pedagogical degree programs (Niesyto, Bellinger & Spengler 2024 [Preprint]) and the orientation framework for the development of curricula for media education degree programs and study components of the Media Education Section of the German Society for Educational Science(DGfE, 2017). Accordingly, our teaching is characterized by current topics and references as well as problem and project orientation - and this with the aim of enabling self-efficacy experiences and promoting media pedagogical professionalization.

We see our seminars as communities of researchers in which a framework is opened up under specific media education issues in order to deal with phenomena and facts in a scientifically sound manner. Ideally, this examination is not only theoretical and empirical, but also leads to didactically sound media productions.

Teaching content: Media education as theory and practice of media education

A glance at the subject areas and related disciplines reveals just how diverse the issues of media education research and teaching can be:

"Media education encompasses all questions relating to the educational significance of media in the areas of leisure, education and work. Wherever media become relevant for the socialization of people as a means of information, influence, entertainment, instruction and everyday organization, they become the subject of media education" (Hüther & Schorb, 2010, p. 265).

Media education is thus a genuinely interdisciplinary educational science sub- and cross-sectional discipline (Barberi 2017), which draws on the theories and findings of its related sciences along its so-called native concepts (in particular media, education, upbringing, socialization). These include philosophy, sociology, psychology, media studies and communication studies, image studies, computer science and many more.

Accordingly, media education is to be understood as the overarching theory, research and practice of media education.

"Media education begins [...] where the transfer of information from subject-independent data networks and information systems ends, and where it is a matter of processing and integrating it into one's own life and experience context. The concept of education thus also eliminates the perspective that [...] is characterized by the fact that people ultimately create both their ego and the world in which they move themselves in order to reflectively communicate about it" (Moser, 2010, pp. 314-315).

Media education therefore refers to examining the constitution - the prerequisites, practices, institutions, conditions and restrictions, but also understandings of media education - on a subjective and structural level in order to be able to understand, shape or change it in a better and scientifically sound way.