Connecting Text

This chapter discusses the act of connecting text. The benefit of a connected text is not as simple as merely 'having an audience'. The act of choice in sending something out into the world, under one's own name, and of one's own creation is a singularly autonomous act. This assertion of self is not uncommon for students in a school classroom, in fact it is an important part of what makes the school such a real and authentic place for students and teachers alike, but the formalisation of this in text is unique. The affordances of this self-assertion are often immediately clear. The text, which frequently represents the most tangible product of the classroom experience for students, extends their voice. The value they place on it is reinforced by the fact that they have the power to publish the text to the world.

After the Subject: Towards a Real Reform

This chapter looks at the design principles of the reforms of GCSE and A level, which have sought to reduce the number of subjects offered by outlawing 'overlap' between subjects, in other words the very interdisciplinarity that this book is seeking to inspire and support. In England now, with the English Baccalaureate (EBacc) and 'new' A levels defined by content rather than concepts, the book's arguments suddenly find themselves fighting 'hand-to-hand' with government policy. These reactionary outbursts represent a rejection of pretty much all of the philosophical movements of the last fifty years, ironically there is a darkly quirky postmodernism in the conception of these 'reforms'. Ultimately, this book encourages more radical thinking about Media Studies and 'Critical Studies'. The chapter then considers the importance of going back to reading not only as a basic skill or an educational tool but as 'only one aspect of consumption, but a fundamental one'.

Performing Text

This chapter studies the act of performing text. The concept of Performance is a core element of a number of different subjects including Media Studies, Drama, and English Literature. The chapter takes aspects of these varying but intrinsically linked subjects into this hypothetical post-Media Studies learning environment and explains how the author would teach this concept as a contemporary understanding, utilising approaches from each subject. This will be pedagogically similar to the recently introduced Teaching by Phenomena method in Finland where instead of focusing on particular subjects, learning is developed through certain topics and concepts, with Geography, History, Economics, and Foreign Languages being covered in the study of the European Union. Media Studies is regarded as a populist subject as the students tend to find it accessible due to having some familiarity of the texts they study; this is an opportunity to develop a course of learning for the students rather than the teachers.

Playing Text

This chapter assesses the act of playing text. It considers what play is before looking at how it can be used in an educational and textual context. Play is a participatory form, one in which an individual is active and has the ability to make decisions which can alter events and change outcomes. Individuals engaged with playing (text) have the ability to continually modify it and will often have different experiences each time they participate. This contrasts with the engagement one may have with presentational forms such as a film, TV drama, novel, or play where one may be seen as an 'active' participant through the reading of the text but the experiences are not fully interactive as the individual will not be able to modify the text. Indeed, play and play-based activities can provide an alternative way of accessing, engaging with, and thinking about material that a more traditional reading would not.

Reading Text

This chapter discusses the act of reading text. In a valid and logical response to the cultural and institutional changes taking place, Media Studies started to look at the rise of e-media and its impact on the construction and consumption of media products. Always looking to be a contemporary subject, this refocus allowed teachers and students an opportunity to engage with the new institutional structures and audience behaviours. The subject changed its terminology and no longer focused on 'texts' but on 'media products'. This shift in the discourse identified that the act of 'reading' the-media had become a secondary consideration. This move away from what was seen as an 'old fashioned' textual focus has meant that students are often having to deal with complex ideas about how the-media works without first developing a confident analytical skills-base. The chapter then looks at the act of reading television, literary texts, 'high art' on TV, and games and beyond. Providing different reading experiences for students is the first step to helping them develop an appreciation for the complex art of reading.

Writing Text

This chapter evaluates the act of writing text. It considers how gamers create culture before, during, and after gameplay via engagement with wider written discourses. Media literacy needs to be refocused towards an 'ongoing engagement with contemporary culture' and gaming is an expression of popular culture that would benefit from pedagogic engagement. It has now become impossible to ignore the impact of gaming on everyday culture, wherein time spent on gaming can outweigh time spent in formal education or employment for some. However, since many people use games to escape from real-life, how can it be that gaming might actually enhance real-life? The chapter suggests that writing has moved beyond traditional boundaries in terms of what is written, where one writes, and how one writes. Much of the experience of gaming is expressed within discourses that exist outside of the actual gameplay itself which, harnessed appropriately, can have important educational value.

Making Text

This chapter explores the act of making text. It looks at the author's own biography. Understanding one's contribution to both the textual and cultural milieu in which one situates themself provides concrete meaning to their existence in the space and time in which they are historically rooted. Of equal importance are questions on the very nature of how one's textual and cultural footprint impacts on the wider society they are in the process of creating. Making texts is a mode of reinforcing this underlying ideology, a strategy of facilitating, locating, constructing, and ultimately communicating or 'making' one's sense of self and place.

Doing Text

This chapter argues that media education after the-media would be formed out of a flattened cultural hierarchy combined with a relativist pedagogy. This would arise out of the death of Media Studies as we know it but also the death of English, Art, Drama and all other 'subjects of text'. These will be replaced with a more reflexive pedagogy of the texture of mediated life. Doing Text means one removes 'the-media' from their field of reference and work instead on the-mediated storytelling of the self and their students' performative textual interactions across spaces and places. This volume provides teachers of Media, English, and other textual curricular with a set of interdisciplinary learning and teaching strategies for what might be called 'new pedagogies'.

Eating Text

This chapter examines the act of eating text. The approach to learning and enquiry explored here is, in part, an act of resistance and re-appropriation, genuinely committed to challenging and contesting imposed assumptions about the relationship between curriculum content, academic rigour, and the development of critical thinking and deep learning. Such a challenge to accepted orthodoxies invites a dialogue between those who see 'more facts' as the route to 'good conceptual understanding' and those who question the very distinction between factual knowledge as a schema for understanding the world and the process of interpretation. The chapter then considers how educators might negotiate with their students the realms of 'action and feelings' and encourage them to see the organic power that language has not just to depict but also to create. In doing so, they are inviting them to engage with food as an act of communication, 'a body of images, a protocol of usages, situations, and behaviour'.

Wearing Text

This chapter examines the act of wearing text. It considers how the author teaches the relationship between the-media and collective identity through an experiment during which students reflect on their own media consumption. As 'wearing' and identity are inextricably linked — the act of dressing in the morning is a process of performance; a construction of an identity that one wants to project to the outside world — the author decided to use outfits or 'worn texts' as a way of tracing their identities in each other's textual fields to see how that identity is mediated. Put simply: the author's students would 'read' an outfit or 'worn text' constructed by her and explore its representation in texts with which they were familiar and vice versa. The outcome would allow them to compare how they see their own identities with how others, as a result of their textual influences, read their identities, and ultimately it would help them to understand the effect the-media can have on their identity.