Abstract

The subject of this paper is the use of broadcast media content – newsreels, news reportage and non-fiction documentaries – in the history classroom. Used educationally as sources of evidence, such moving images offer students a valuable learning experience. Drawing on findings from a study involving students analysing media content in a Maltese secondary history classroom, I report how students preferred the documentary-type of broadcast content. Students demonstrated an awareness of disciplinary knowledge when analysing moving images and highlighted certain limitations. Teacher questions were key to driving the analysis forward. I place these findings within the general goal of helping students become visually literate. It is hoped that the reflections offered will help educators maximise the use of broadcast media content to promote effective learning in history and increase awareness among researchers and practitioners of television history and culture about educationally-relevant content.

Highlights

  • The merits of broadcast media content to teaching and learning history have long been recognised

  • The subject of this paper is the use of broadcast media content – newsreels, news reportage and non-fiction documentaries – in the history classroom

  • Looking into ways how broadcast media may contribute towards understanding history as a discipline, this paper explores the pedagogical use of broadcast media in the history classroom by discussing findings from a study[5] in a Maltese state secondary school with 15/16-year-old students in their final year of secondary school (Year 11)

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Summary

Introduction

The merits of broadcast media content to teaching and learning history have long been recognised. With a history education that foregrounds disciplinary thinking through the use of second-order concepts (e.g., evidence, cause and consequence, change and continuity),[2] on its own this experience is not enough; it needs to be supported by a pedagogical approach that focuses on the critical analysis of media content with the aim of nurturing visual literacy in students. Such media content includes footage of key historical events captured live on camera and shown on newsreels, broadcast on television, or incorporated in historical documentary which, in history education, are seen as contemporary history sources.[3]

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