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Media Literacy, Curriculum Development and Research as a Tool for Innovation in Teaching The wave of transformation in curriculum development, assessment, and certification that is now taking place in Europe and a growing number of countries in the former Soviet Union is part of a movement to create a common ground with the international education community. The changes are linked to the Bologna declaration of 1999, when more than 45 countries in Europe and the former USSR agreed to reform their higher educational systems in order to create convergence by 2010. These reforms are intended to improve the ability of scholars to move from one country to another in order to teach or conduct research at institutions of their choosing. In the former Soviet Union, several ministries of education have agreed to replace their five-year academic certification programs with four-year Baccalaureate degrees. Some have also taken steps to introduce one or two-year Master¡¯s programs that are in alignment with higher education degree programs in the United States, Canada and a growing number of countries in Western Europe. As part of this change, universities in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) are beginning to alter the number of credit hours required to complete course work during a given semester. Rather than focusing on the traditional one-way transference of information through lecture as had been part of accepted practice in the former Soviet Union, teachers are being encouraged to adopt multiple interactive methods of instruction. The typical 60-65 contact-hour schedule is now being replaced with 45 hours of instruction during the typical 15-week semester. The idea is to have students spend more time on homework assignments and projects in an effort to enhance their overall learning experience with individual research. In addition, university departments in the CIS are beginning to incorporate multiple assessment grading models into their curriculums. Student assessment based exclusively on one end-of-semester exam is now being supplemented with multiple evaluations based on a number of assignments, projects and exams administered throughout the semester. These reforms are creating a need for our media literacy program to train the next generation of teachers in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in new philosophies of education and research. Our program will compare and contrast the benefits and difficulties of the various approaches used in the East and in the West. In addition to the influence these reforms are having on teaching methodology, the changes are beginning to extend into the sphere of research approaches utilized by media literacy scholars. Traditional research approaches in the former Soviet Union focused on ethno-graphical studies whereby scholars conducted research by surveying existing documents. Qualitative research studies involving small-scale focus groups were conducted on a very limited scale and were typically funded by private sources that were often associated with state-run media outlets. The political nature of the Soviet regime did not encourage large-scale independent data collection methods employing empirical research methods, as it would have promoted freedom of speech and the sharing of opinions in open forums with the general populace. Large-scale empirical research studies would have countered the ideological basis of Marxist/Leninist philosophy in which the media served the state. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, information related to the various approaches for conducting research in North America, and in both Western and Eastern Europe, became more readily available to scholars. However, access to this information was often limited to those with opportunities to travel abroad and to those with financial support for obtaining the new and relevant literature. Despite the stated intent to reform curricula, political pressures and limited funding opportunities continue to prevent scholars from conducting large-scale research efforts involving original data collection. In the field of media studies, these constraints continue to limit the research that faculty in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe are able to carry out. However, this period of transition is expected to shift over the next five to 10 years, allowing the next generation of teachers and research scholars to incorporate innovative teaching methods in their classrooms and to implement multiple research methods in order to obtain the best possible results for their academic research. Therefore, the goal of our program is to expose young scholars to new teaching methodologies and theoretical research approaches that will enable them to compare and contrast the ideological basis of the media¡¯s role in the East and in the West and the influence that politics and government play in determining the function that media serve in society. By having exposure to multiple media theory approaches and research methods and understanding the benefits of each method, scholars in our program will be able to instill in their students new critical thinking skills which will enable them to become more savvy consumers of the media. By establishing a common set of theoretical and research concepts used in both the East and the West, the media literacy scholars in our program will have greater acceptance and access to the international academic community.
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