Media surrounds people in their lives constantly. When we wake up, we check our mobile phones or computers for news, new messages and emails. On the way to work we listen to the radio and in the evenings we are entertained by various programs on television. We also use different types of social media to connect and share our lives with each other. Even though digital and social media have become more and more common in the recent decades, we also use more traditional types of media. We still read newspapers and books, although there are electronic versions of both and those are being used more and more by people.
Media outside the school offers a wealth of authentic learning material (Merilampi 2014:
104). However, being surrounded by media has inevitably led us to a situation where media has become a part of teaching as well. It has raised questions, such as how we should educate our children so that they become critical thinkers and skilled users of media. The utilization of media in teaching has been around for decades in one form or another, starting with newspapers and television. However, currently there are various other media that can be made use of in the language classroom. In fact, using media in education is on the brink of a new era because of the digitalisation of teaching that is currently taking place in Finland, for instance in the form of electronic matriculation examinations that will be completely electronic by the year 2019 (Matriculation Examination Board).
There are as many opinions about using media in education as there are teachers. Some see especially the newer types of media as irrelevant for teaching, whereas others have discovered essential tools for teaching. Since media surrounds us and it is a part of our everyday lives, it is important to know what teachers think about the use of media in education and how they evaluate their skills in using media for pedagogical purposes. In addition, it is essential to know what teachers think are the greatest benefits and biggest challenges for using media in education and whether they want to have more in-service training on the topic. This will be important information to the principals of schools, the creators of learning material as well as teacher education programs and even the National Board of Education, since they will have the possibility to make improvements and modify guidelines based on that information.
Producing media literate members of society is one of the main purposes of media education (Kupiainen and Sintonen 2009: 15). It is essential that teachers know how to use media in teaching so that they can participate in educating students to become critical users of media.
Using media critically is one of the media skills listed by the National Board of Education (2012), which calls media skills citizen skills of the information age. This in turn means that media skills will most likely be one of the key skills required in working life in the future.
According to Kotilainen and Hankala (1999: 43), media literacy is an essential skill that everyone should master because in the future democracy will increasingly take place via media. Critical media literacy is also one basic requirement in implementing lifelong learning.
The present study will examine how often teachers use media in their teaching and on their free time. We will take a closer look at the opinions teachers have on the usefulness of media in language teaching. The participants of the present study also evaluated their own pedagogical skills in using media in language teaching. In addition, the greatest benefits and the greatest challenges of using media in language teaching are discussed as well as the need for in-service training in the use of media. The effects of age and teaching experience on using media in language teaching are also examined.
The results of the present study most likely show that teachers use media to varying extent both in the classroom and on their free time, mostly depending on their own familiarity and experience with them. It is also possible that the teacher’s age and teaching experience have an effect on how often the teacher uses media in the classroom. Many schools have invested in the newest technological devices to enhance teaching and enable the utilization of new forms of media, but it is unclear whether the money spent on technological equipment is really worth it. The present study takes a look at whether some types of media are used more than others and aims to find out the reasons behind teachers’ decisions to include certain types of media and exclude others.
The theoretical framework for the present study lies in foreign language learning and teaching in Finland and draws on what the current and the upcoming National curricula say about media in relation to (language) learning. In addition, media education and integrating the utilization of media into language teaching are important parts of the theoretical framework.
The most extensive research carried out on the topic of media in the language classroom in Finland was conducted by Luukka et al (2008). The study examined which media teachers used in their work and in their free time. The questionnaire used in this study is a modified version of that used by Luukka et al. and the results of this study will be closely compared to the results of Luukka et al. in order to find out whether the media landscapes of the language classroom have significantly changed during the last decade or not.
The results of this study will provide useful information as to what forms of media are used the most in the language classroom and what forms receive less attention. The results will also reveal what types of media are seen as useful. The results may further affirm the need of in-service training in the use of media in teaching. In addition, the developers of teaching materials as well as teacher education programs might benefit from the results.
This study consists of five main parts. At first, we will take a look at the history and the current situation of media in education and define key terms used in this study. The second part of the present study will take a look at media in foreign language teaching and present previous research carried out on the topic of media in education both in Finland and around the world. The third part will introduce the methods and the data of this study. In the fourth part the main results of this study are presented and compared to reveal meaningful differences and correlations. In the fifth part of this study, the main findings are discussed and ideas for further research are introduced. However, let us first take a look at how media is defined.