A design based research project

Buckingham’s Digital Media Framework and a new media pedagogy

Abstract

Is there an urgency to merge media pedagogy into traditional classroom practices, to support teachers and students with their interpretation and understanding of digital media literacies in light of the digital revolution? This paper reports on a design- based research investigation, which focuses on Buckingham’s (2003) Digital Media Literacies Framework and seeks to address the impact that digital media will have on students and teachers now and into the future. The study wishes to explore the interpretations of students as they become creators and producers of their own learning and how pedagogies may need to change across the curriculum. The proposed participants in this study are school students, teachers, academic lecturers and media students from different socio-economic groups in the Sydney and Greater Western Sydney areas. The researcher in this study will look at digital artifacts such as the Learning Federation learning objects and student’s use of Adobe CS4 and other multimedia software, where students and teachers construct their own learning to evaluate a new pedagogical practice in teaching. In addition, the social software’s such as Facebook and MySpace will also be addressed to determine changes in pedagogies in regards to collaboration in the classroom. Buckingham (2003 p.185) argues that ‘media education provides a more concrete and coherent framework for addressing teaching and learning. Comparing current pedagogies with the Digital Media Literacies Framework will be explored in this paper.