Globalising Australian screen production curricula

Abstract

Australian media degrees have gained increasing popularity in Southeast Asia. Since 2000, universities have been offering the same media programs delivered on their home campus in Australia to cohorts of Asian students in locations such as Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaysia. Generally, these screen media and screen production curriculums emphasize Western notions of creativity, artistic freedom, collaboration practices, and media regulations, which depart significantly from Asian concepts of academic conformity, collectivism and limited media freedom. While the globalisation of curriculum is not new to the field of education research, there is very little literature exploring the challenges of delivering screen education in an increasingly international university system. This paper reviews the relevant academic literature currently available in the fields of education, creativity, media literacy and the political economy of the media in order to understand how screen production educators in Australia can revise current curricula to include a wider perspective of global screen production and practices. The review suggests that screen production educators should consider revising curricula content through a variety of teaching practices, such as student self-assessment of their creative and collaborative practices, an appreciation of a wide range of global texts and creativity, an overview of transnational screen economies, and the provision of skills to negotiate these domains of power.