Teachers as media educators

The role of teachers as media educators is frequently associated with a curriculum. Media education curricula in Europe tend to follow frameworks of MIL, digital, and computer literacy (Frau-Meigs et al., 2017). Taking as an example the state of Thuringia, Germany, its media education guideline for secondary schools, called “Kursplan Medienkunde,” consists of a list of competences that students should develop. Typically, secondary schools in Germany have students between 10 and 18 years old. Findings of the study by Brüggen et al. (2017) show that parents in Germany consider 11-12 years the most critical age in terms of online risks for their children. Thus, media education in secondary schools can target this critical group as well as older children and adolescents.

The “Kursplan Medienkunde” has seven competence areas: 1) Information and data; 2) Communication and cooperation; 3) Media production; 4) Presentation techniques; 5) Analysis and assessment; 6) Media and society; 7) Law, data security, and youth media protection. In an evaluation report of the guideline, Wolling and Berger (2018) observed that the competence areas of the “Kursplan Medienkunde” are consonant with the ones proposed by well-known references, such as the European Digital Competence Framework (Ferrari, 2013), the Framework of the Partnership for 21^st Century Learning (2015), and the UNESCO Media and Information Literacy Framework (UNESCO, 2013). Teachers usually carry the primary responsibility in schools for developing MIL competences with their students (Brüggemann, 2013). In German school curricula, media literacy is not a subject but should be taught in the realm of traditional school subjects instead (KMK, 2012). Thus, schools and individual teachers usually have the freedom to decide which media competences will be addressed in each subject. Despite guidelines of media education, Hartai observed that, not only in Germany, but also in the member countries of the European Union in general, it is not clear who should teach media education and with what qualifications, and “there is no single or well-defined focus of media literacy in formal education” (2014: 67). Due to this lack of firm establishment of media literacy in the school curricula, it is likely to exist considerable variance in the efforts that teachers invest in fostering MIL.

Studies addressed this variance and identified the following positive predictors of teachers’ fostering of their students’ media-related competences: adopting ICT for instruction more frequently (Berger & Wolling, 2019; Hatlevik & Hatlevik, 2018; Lorenz et al., 2019; Siddiq et al., 2016), having more positive attitudes towards the value of ICT for instruction (Berger & Wolling, 2019; Hatlevik & Hatlevik, 2018; Karaseva et al., 2015; Siddiq et al., 2016), feeling better prepared to deal with ICT (Hatlevik & Hatlevik, 2018; Siddiq et al., 2016), collaborating with other teachers to exchange knowledge and experiences about media education (Lorenz et al., 2019), teaching humanities subjects (Berger & Wolling, 2019; Siddiq et al., 2016), and teaching in specific types of schools (Berger & Wolling, 2019). Among these studies that explore the teacher’s perspective, only the study by Karaseva et al. (2015) addresses the fostering of media-related competences as mediation. Otherwise, most of the studies that refer to teachers as mediating agents investigated mediation from the perspective of children and adolescents, not of teachers. Consequently, the question arises of whether it is only a matter of terminology, or if there are differences in the teachers’ practices of fostering students’ MIL and mediating students’ media use.

Different from MIL frameworks, the concept of mediation of children and adolescents’ media use does not usually establish competences as goals. Therefore, it is less applicable in a curricular format. Concepts of mediation develop around the idea of adopting strategies to influence children’s and adolescents’ media use (Kalmus, 2013; Kirwil, 2009). Thus, mediation happens concerning a minor’s natural media behavior (Livingstone & Helsper, 2008), influencing, managing, or shaping it through different kinds of intervention or strategies. In the literature, five main types of mediation strategies are identified: 1) Restriction through rules and limitations of determined aspects of the media usage, e.g., time or access to particular contents; 2) Co-use, when the agent and the minor engage together in a shared media activity; 3) Monitoring, when the agent verifies details about the minor’s media use in records left on devices (e.g., browser history, chat logs); 4) Supervision, when the agent observes what the minor is doing with the media while the activity is happening; 5) Active mediation, when the agent instructs and talks to the minor about media content or media use (Bartau-Rojas et al., 2018; Livingstone & Helsper, 2008; Nikken & Jansz, 2014; Nikken & Schols, 2015; Smahelova et al., 2017).

Mendoza (2009) discussed possible connections between different types of mediation and media literacy, focusing on parents as media educators in regard to children’s television consumption. For instance, the author connects restrictive mediation to a protectionist approach to media education, observing that advice materials addressed to parents frequently suggest adopting restrictions to children’s media use. This creates an idea that restriction is the easiest way to protect minors from harm that media may cause. When it comes to active mediation, Mendoza argues that it is “the type of mediation most closely aligned with media literacy” (2009: 36) since it consists of talking to the minor about media use.

In their study with teachers from Estonia and Latvia, Karaseva et al. (2015) found out that teachers engaged mostly in active mediation and co-use to teach competences that help students identify opportunities in online media use and develop critical thinking. Teachers also reported adopting social and technical restrictions to try to protect students from potentially harmful online content. These findings suggest that the fostering of media-related competences happens through practices of (mainly active) mediation. Thus, the boundaries between the practices of mediation and fostering MIL are not clear, and both practices can happen interchangeably. Therefore, instead of looking at teachers’ efforts in specific curricular areas of media literacy, this study seeks to approximate the concepts of fostering MIL and of mediation. Therefore, it systematizes teachers’ practice according to what the two concepts share in common: the goals of expanding opportunities and reducing risks in students’ media use.

Mediation of online risks and opportunities

Livingstone and Haddon (2009) proposed a classification of risks and opportunities in online media use in the areas of content, contact, and conduct (Table 1). These areas correspond to situations that children and adolescents are likely to engage in when they are online. The area of content refers to when the minor is a recipient, and thus, encounters opportunities and risks in the content available online to everyone. The area of contact considers the minor as a participant in a communicational situation, in which the minor engages in interactions with other people, mainly peers and adults. Finally, in the area of conduct, the minor is an actor, who initiates the interactions with others. Brüggen et al. (2017) proposed the additional area of contract, referring to financial costs that may occur due to unintentional in-app purchases and subscriptions, which can be done with a few clicks, especially on smartphones. However, this area was connected only to risks.

Research that tested factors associated with mediation of risks and opportunities focused only on parents so far, i.e., the associations were tested only regarding parents’ characteristics and the types of mediation they tend to adopt. The literature employed restrictive, active and enabling mediation as outcome variables, where restrictive mediation corresponds mostly to the mediation of risks (Mendoza, 2009), enabling mediation tends to favor opportunities (Livingstone et al., 2017), and active mediation can target either risks or opportunities (Nathanson, 2002). In different studies, a higher level of digital skills was associated with more frequent employment of restrictive mediation (Lee, 2013; Livingstone et al., 2017; Nikken & Jansz, 2014) and also with enabling mediation (Livingstone et al., 2017). However, when it comes to usage, Nikken and Jansz (2014) found that parents who use the internet less frequently tended to employ restrictions more often. Similarly, Nikken and Schols (2015) found a negative association between the amount of time that parents spend with media (TV, computers, or touchscreens) and the frequency that they apply restrictive and active mediation. In terms of demographics, most types of mediations tended to be adopted more frequently by female parents (Livingstone et al., 2017; Nikken & Jansz, 2014), although adoption of technical restrictions was an exception (Nikken & Jansz, 2014). Finally, the age of the parent was negatively associated with enabling mediation but positively associated with restrictive mediation (Livingstone et al., 2017).

This study attempts to approximate the concept of fostering media literacy with the concept of mediation by focusing on the fostering of competences that aim to expand opportunities and the ones that aim to counteract risks in students’ media use, with the research question:

RQ: How can teachers’ efforts in mediating opportunities and risks of students’ media use be explained?

Based on the literature about teachers’ fostering of MIL, factors are tested as predictors of both opportunities and risks. Positive associations are expected with regular use of ICT in class, positive attitudes towards media education, training, and collaboration with colleagues. In contrast, negative associations are hypothesized with teaching science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and teaching at a Gymnasium. In the German school system, Gymnasium is a type of school that emphasizes the preparation for entering higher education and is selective. Thus, it is considered more differentiated from other school types. Based on the studies with parents, mediation of both risks and opportunities are expected to be negatively associated with private digital use and positively associated with being female. Age is expected to predict risks positively and opportunities negatively.

Data collection and sample

The study employs data of a survey conducted with secondary teachers in 2017 in the state of Thuringia, Germany. From the secondary schools of the state (approx. 468 with 12,100 teachers), 88 schools were randomly selected to participate in the voluntary survey. The principals of the selected schools were asked to distribute the questionnaire among the teachers in their school. Besides the link to the online survey, schools also received printed questionnaires with a pre-stamped envelope. Thus, teachers could answer the online or the paper version of the questionnaire.

The sample of the study consists of 315 teachers (response rate of 12%). The majority are female (72%) and older than 50 (53%). Half (50%) have over 25 years of experience in the teaching practice. The characteristics of the sample are similar to the teachers’ population in Thuringia (Thüringer Ministerium für Bildung, Jugend und Sport, 2018).

Measures

Mediation of risks and opportunities. Teachers were asked how frequently they would conduct activities in their classes aiming to foster several media-related competences in their students on a scale from 1=never to 5=very frequently. Within these competences were identified the ones aimed at minimizing risks and maximizing opportunities in the dimensions of content, contact, and conduct, based on Livingstone and Haddon (2009). The dimension of contract (Brüggen et al., 2017) was not adopted because it refers only to risks. The sets of competences were tested with a principal component analysis. The factor solution delivered two dimensions that together explained 63% of the variance (Table 2). The dimensions were consonant with the framework proposed by Livingstone and Haddon (2009). The only exception was “Following the adequate norms for online communication,” which was initially identified as addressing the risk of conduct (i.e., avoid that students perpetrate cyberbullying or hate speech). However, in the analysis, it loaded in the dimension of opportunities. Due to this contradiction, the item was excluded from the composite scales. All the other items had their scales averaged to build two composite scales: teachers’ mediation of online opportunities and teachers’ mediation of online risks.

• ICT use in class. Teachers were asked how often they use a set of 12 ICTs to conduct activities with their students in class on a scale from 1=never to 5=several times a week. The items were averaged, resulting in a composite scale indicating frequency of use of ICT with students in class (alpha=0.90, M=2.83, SD=0.88).

• Importance of risks and opportunities. Teachers were asked how important they consider that students develop each of the competences in Table 2 on a scale from 1=not important at all to 5=very important. The items were averaged to build the composite scales of importance attributed to competences that address opportunities (alpha=0.70, M=3.98, SD=0.46) and to competences that address risks in students’ online use (alpha=0.77, M=4.43, SD=0.41).

• Training. Teachers were asked whether they received in-service or pre-service training on how to teach students about media use. The answer options were 0=no or 1=yes (yes=37.10%).

• Collaboration. Teachers were asked whether they learned about how to teach students about media use through exchanges with other teachers. The answer options were 0=no or 1=yes (yes=46.30%).

• Private digital media use. A question asked how important teachers consider the internet, computers, smartphones, and social media for their private use. For each item, the possible answers were on a scale from 1=not important at all to 5=especially important. These four items were averaged to build a composite scale of importance of digital media for private use (alpha=0.76, M=3.68, SD=0.72).

• School subjects taught. Teachers were asked whether they taught biology, chemistry, mathematics, physics, and informatics. The answer options were 0=no or 1=yes. Those who answered “yes” in one or more items were grouped to indicate the teachers involved in the instruction of STEM subjects (yes=44.48%).

• Type of school. Among five types of schools of the German school system operating in the state of Thuringia, teachers were asked to indicate the type of school where they teach. As the main differences exist between Gymnasium and other types of schools, the reference measure was set to Gymnasium, with answer options 0=no or 1=yes (yes=35.83%).

• Age and gender. Teachers were asked to choose in which of seven age groups they belonged, ranging from 1=up to 29 years old until 7=55 or older (largest group 7=34.30%). In addition, teachers were asked to inform their gender 0=female, 1=male (female=72%).

Data analysis

The hypothesized associations were tested with linear regression analyses so that the effects of each predictor can be verified when the remaining predictors in the model are held constant. One regression model was calculated for opportunities, and another for risks. Bivariate correlations between the predictors and variance inflation factors did not indicate multicollinearity problems.