Abstract
The research presented is of an interdisciplinary character and it deals with the topic which verges on the hybrid fields of the visual culture and media studies and pedagogy. The enormous development of the mass and network media has reinforced the influence of visual culture.
The mass media experts admit that pictures influence the recipients more strongly than words as they, apart from other aspects, are more similar to the real world we live in. (Jirák, Burton, 2001). Therefore, the need of visual literacy has increased and it has become a significant concept in the educational subject entitled Arts Education.
The aim of the research is (i) examine the interdisciplinary penetrations of the Arts Education and the Media Education in educational practice at the Czech post-secondary level/grammar schools. (ii) Find the educational strategies of how to develop the partially overlapping visual and media literacies in the educational practice and to substantiate these methods as examples of good practice. Research questions are: (i) Is the Arts Education an appropriate field in which to include the Media Education cross-curriculum theme? Can these discourses enrich each other? (ii) How to work with the Media Education cross-curricular theme in the Arts Education so that both of the educational subjects' targets would be reached? Based on the research objectives targeting at the curriculum improvement and providing support for the art teachers an Action research has been chosen.
As stated by John Elliot (1991), a successful curriculum must be based on the existing practice, devised by the practitioners themselves and to be developed in the classrooms. This paper is focused on a following particular case study.
I have realised the case study presented as a reflective practitioner (Schön, 1983, Elliott 1991) at a grammar school developing the students' general outlook. The research has been conducted during a selective seminar taking place in the last year of the studies (eighteen-year-old students).
I intend to closely deal with one of the thematic fields, namely with propaganda and a political campaign, which we were focused on for four weeks. The aim was (i) to develop the students' ability to recognise the propaganda techniques (ii) and the ability to analyse a political campaign and to identify its possible propaganda characteristics.
Also, (iii) the lessons focused on the gaining of the political campaign and anticampaign creation experience. So far, the partial results of the case study presented have shown that it is necessary to lead the students to formulate certain, albeit obvious for some of them, mechanisms of visual and mass communication.
The obviously different socio-cultural background and general historical overview of each individual student are very significant as far as the ability to analyse visual messages is concerned.