The current state of media education in Korea remains in an elementary level in terms of qualitative and quantitative capacity considering its socially-demanding importance. Despite that active discussions on the necessity of media education are held ...
The current state of media education in Korea remains in an elementary level in terms of qualitative and quantitative capacity considering its socially-demanding importance. Despite that active discussions on the necessity of media education are held in our society and that concerns on the media education are widespread, systematic and concrete activities toward the enforcement and diffusion of media education are rare.
This contrasts with the situations of other countries such as the Australia, Canada, England and the Unites States, where recognition of educational importance are widespread in society, media education are being taught in the regular school curriculum, and a number of textbooks, teaching materials and pedagogical strategies are already in use and being developed.
It is critical that media education in Korea should find its way out of conceptual discussions and step up to practical activities. The more important duty in the Korean media education is to answer to the question of "How", rather than "What" of media education.
Thus, this study proposes developmental strategies for the Korean media education model. The research questions of the present study follow: first, what are the theoretical backgrounds of media education?; second, how can we classify other countries' models and what are the characteristics of each model?; third, what are the traits and problems of the Korean media education?; fourth, what could be the appropriate Korean media education model, and how do we achieve it?
To probe the research problems, this study looks into basic theories of media education in the light of historical trend, and deals with detailed examples of media education programs carried out in other countries, and also in Korea.
From the investigation of foreign experiences comes out two models: public education model and civil movement model. The former, adopted mainly in the Australia and Canada focuses on the introduction and stabilization of media education in the elementary and higher level education. The latter, which characterizes the American model of media education concerns with the diversity and practicality of media education activities.
The current state of media education in Korea can be diagnosed as the state of "methodical proliferation", somewhere between the state of "awareness" and "technical specialization".
The model proposed in the present study is characterized as dual system of public education and civil movement model. To improve the current disparity of media' education in Korea, putting overemphasis on civil movement, it is critical that public educational system should be rearranged to accomodate media education into the formal curriculum. For this purpose, the comprehensive cooperation among diverse social entities including the government, academic professionals, the media industry, teachers, and civil activists are most essential.