Activity
More Than Just Child's Pl@y? Media Literacy in Early Childhood Education
Meeting for Expertsin Feburary 2011
Organizers:
Finnish Society on Media Education, Mannerheim League for Child Welfare
Place:
Mannerheim League of Child Welfare, Toinen Linja 19, Helsinki, Finland
SEMINAR LANGUAGE IS ENGLISH
Small children up to school age spend a great amount of their time among different media. That is why it’s so important to discuss and develop media education in early childhood education. During two days experts get acquainted with the Finnish media education field by examining engagement in fan- and media culture from a small child’s perspective and by getting to know the latest research. The work group participants’ presents projects and researches and get acquainted with the situation in the other countries.
Finnish Society on Media Education will pay one night in a hotel, dinner on Monday and lunch on Tuesday for international participants. No participation fee. More information about the event Hanna Wahlman / Finnish Society on Media Education, hanna.wahlman(a)mediakasvatus.fi, phone. +358 050 501 7330.
Media education in Finland - publication and Best Practises on Media Education in Finland-brochure, Autumn 2009
Research
1. Media Barometer 2010: Media Use of the Small Children (0-8 years)
The research project implemented by the Finnish Society on Media Education focuses on developing methods for regular measures of small children's media use and their media relations. Since the media environments of the children are continuously changing, this kind of study should be accomplished regularly, for example every second year. One of the goals of the project is to develop a pattern which could be used later also to study older children or adolescents. The main target of the study is to develop a model for a media barometer focusing on small children and to introduce recent results on children's media use in Finland during the year 2010. There is a need for this kind of study on both national and international level and the result can be used for international comparisons.
Children from toddlers to schoolers grow up in an audiovisual media environment and they start to use tv, game consoles and Internet nearly as soon ast they start to walk. There's just a few studies that focus on how small children use media, partly because it's quite challenging to study toddlers. It's difficult to get reliable information for the analysis from children that are so young and maybe unable to specify their opinions because of the undeveloped skills in spoken and written language. These are just some of the reasons why the research’s methods should be piloted.
In the Western countries, already the children under school-age grow up in an audiovisual media environment - television, game consoles and the internet being part of their everyday lives. There are only a few studies concerning the media use of the small children, partly because of the challenges of studying toddlers. Children may not be able to bring out their opinions and conceptions verbally or in writing and thus it becomes challenging to receive relieble information on their media use.
The study contains a questionnaire for the parents of small children, qualitative experiments both in preschools and at homes and a questionnaire for 7-8-year-olds at school. Since the children are not necessarily able to answer the questionnaire independently, there are peers helping them with the question forms. The object of this method is to get answers from the children outside their home environment. The questionnaire and the interviews can include questions on frightening or scary media contents and fears of the children, the conflicts between the parents, children and the day-care professionals and migratory media and different kind of creative activities among media.
The questionnaire for the parents includes e.g. questions on the media use (what, where, how much?) as well as questions on aspects on the child's protection and their own media production. Furthermore, the media barometer contains a special theme which changes yearly. The theme could consist of topics such as media contents (e.g. violence in media), specific theme like social media or children's media use in different age, language or cultural groups.
The first research findings will be presented in an expert meeting 1-2 November 2010 in Helsinki. ”More than just child’s pl@y? Media literacy in early childhood education” is organised in cooperation with the Mannerheim League for Child Welfare.
For more information: Researcher Terhi Walamies, terhi.walamies(a)mediakasvatus.fi, +358 50 551 1088