ABSTRACT
In the United Kingdom, media education has been around in some form throughout the twentieth century but there has been little systematic research about what students should learn and what they might be expected to achieve at different ages. This chapter draws on data from a three-year project called Developing Media Literacy (DML),1 involving learners from the ages of 5–16 in two locations in England with contrasting socioeconomic and geographic profiles. The first setting comprised a small city with two universities and expanding high-tech industries, in which the percentage of young people entitled to free school meals was below the national average. The second setting comprised a small town with high unemployment and no further or higher education provision, and located on the periphery of a large cosmopolitan city. The percentage of young people entitled to free school meals in this setting was above the national average. With a specific focus on learning progression, the project drew on sociocultural learning theory and media education pedagogy to bring students’ out-of-school media cultures into dialogue with formal Media Studies concepts to develop media literacy.
