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Johnson, L. (2001). Media, Education, and Change. New York: PeterLang. Paperback, 182 pp. ISBN: 0-8204-4281-X.

Interesting research often begins with a significant personal moment orevent. This is the case for the research reported in a recent book byLesley Johnson in which she explores and develops what she describesas the conversation between therapy and education. There have beenmany such conversations over recent years, Turkle’s Second Self comesto mind, and Johnson’s work adds an interesting dimension to what isan increasingly important area of interest for many schools, teachers andscholars.

Johnson’s interest in therapy arose during work she did with recoveringanorexics. In the process of making a training documentary for medicalpersonnel, she recounts the time when she saw her own videotaped imageand the impact that had on her own recovery. The incident, she reports,proved significant years later when she was working with students whowere making videos. She noticed the changes in her students after theyhad seen themselves on videotape. These two events were the beginningof her broad agenda concerned with media, education and change, andspecifically, the research reported in this book. The book, which followsthe logic of a thesis, maps literature which informs the study, provides amethodological argument for the study, and then reports an analysis of theresearch data.

Johnson argues that in the media education literature there is a lack ofattention to the psychology of “the self” and proposes a three componentframework for her study: receptive aesthetics; intermodal expressivetherapy and media literacy education. In doing so, Johnson ranges acrossa broad set of related literatures which she uses to make a case for theimportance of considering personal and professional changes to the selfthat arise from media literacy education. Specifically, she argues that thoseworking with the practical dimensions of media literacy, that is, in this casewriting with videotape, need to be aware of the possibility of therapeuticencounters.

Journal of Educational Change 3: 417–427, 2002.© 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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The research reported in the book is based on work Johnson did withfive of twenty-eight teachers in a video production course of a master’sdegree program in media literacy. Four students from classes taught bysome of the teachers in the study also participated in the research. She usedvideotaped interviews of the teachers which were viewed for self-reflectiontogether with narrative writing that she and the teachers undertook duringthe course. Sixty of the one hundred and eighty pages of the book are givento reporting and analyzing teacher reflections. It is a detailed and data-rich account of the work. The data analysis chapters offer media educatorsuseful and important insights into each teacher’s engagement with medialiteracy. The analysis is well connected to and further builds the frameworkdeveloped earlier in the book. Most usefully, the analysis also relates tosome of the current debates and controversies in media education and theanalysis allows teachers to re-examine their positions in respect to some ofthese.

I read the book with interest and as a video neophyte (my own experi-ence of seeing myself on videotape goes back to the days when videotapedmicroteaching was a fad in teacher training) but also as someone withstrong interests in a related technology, that of computing and its use ineducation. Many of the arguments in the book have parallels with thepromotion and use of computer technology in schools. Thus, while I appre-ciated the advocacy in the book for the importance of some kind of medialiteracy in schools, I was unpersuaded by many of the particularities ofthe argument. If we accept for a moment that for some, seeing themselveson videotape can provide instances of reflection which lead to personal orprofessional growth as is reported in the data, there are others for whomthis may not be the case or who might need the kind of careful inter-viewing and prompting that is reported in the research study. Equally, theremight be other media which when treated in a similar manner might affordsimilar opportunities for personal and professional growth. Here though isan important message from the book. In attending to the professional needsof teachers, supporting them to examine the field in which they teach canprovide important opportunities for growth. This does not only apply toteachers interested in media (television) literacy but also applies to teachersof mathematics to do mathematics, to teachers of history to do historyand so on. Such professional development is, in my mind, an importantbalance to the usual fare of professional development which concentrateson teaching, assessment or curriculum development.

Another element of the argument is the importance of the participationof the learner in the production of texts, the practical component of medialiteracy. While not disputing the value of such experiences in coming to

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understand how particular texts, such as are to be found in television,are constructed, other approaches to media analysis can, in my experi-ence, afford similar insights. There are parallels here with other mediaand technologies. For instance, there is a position held by many teachersof computing that the teaching of programming is essential in coming toterms with a world in which computers and their software play such animportant part. While there are certainly important insights to be gainedin learning how to program, the argument that one needs to have someexperience of programming in order to deal adequately with computer soft-ware is difficult to sustain in the face of the complexity and sophisticationof modern software. Rather, an argument can be made that in order touse software wisely a user needs appropriate complementary skills. Forinstance, when using modeling software, a user should have some under-standing of the assumptions, approximations and detail of the model, thatis what has been included and, importantly, what has been excluded (seefor example, Turkle, 1997; Weizenbaum, 1984). What can be difficult towork out is just what these skills might be. For instance, what should weknow about mobile telephony or the contemporary internal combustionengine? In each of these instances a decision is taken about how much ofthe black box is to be opened. For the technologies of television productionconsidered in this book, it is unclear where that line is drawn.

The book also prompted me to wonder about how authentic (in thesense of fidelity to mature or insider forms of social practices) medialiteracy in schools can ever be. The sophistication of current techniquesin the production of film and television, much of which relies on someform of computer support, might suggest that what can be achieved inschool or in local television stations is limited. The book is in agree-ment to some degree when it concludes with reference to the “exaggeratedgrowth and complexity of the media” (p. 151). However, it argues that theapproach advocated and supported by the research will support learnersto deal with the new complexities. That may be the case for somewho are fortunate to have teachers of Johnson’s skills and insights. Theparticular approach advocated in the book is clearly useful under somecircumstances. There are also other useful lessons to be drawn from thework.

REFERENCES

Turkle, S. (1984). The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit. New York: Simonand Schuster.

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Turkle, S. (1997). Seeing through computers: education in a culture of simulation. TheAmerican Prospect (March–April) 31, 76–82.

Weizenbaum, J. (1984). Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgement toCalculation. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin.

CHRIS BIGUM

Faculty of Education and Creative ArtsCentral Queensland UniversityAustraliaE-mail: c.bigum@cqu.edu.au

The first chapter of Media, Education and Change provides a surveyof now orthodox “core concepts” of Anglo-American media education:language, institution, representation, narrative, audience and production.The displacement Lesley Johnson wants to perform upon these common-places is to align them with forms of media pedagogy that foster the“self-recognition and self-discovery” of students and teachers in order topromote personal growth and professional transformation. Her theoreticalmatrix for this undertaking is a mixture of concepts drawn from expressivetherapy, depth psychology and reception aesthetics. This framework struc-tures her research questions and subsequent interpretation of videotapedinterviews and journal entries compiled from five self-selected teacher-participants who took her graduate course on video production. Most ofwhat she discovers in their responses is just what you might expect to findin interviews of recent converts to media education. There is evidence theyhave become more literate, critical interpreters of media; a felt need foran ongoing “forum” to ensure continuing professional development sincethey are typically the only teacher in this area at a school, and a strongcommitment to student centered classrooms as a result of the premiumplaced on group work and production. In a chapter entitled “Students’Point-of-View,” she develops parallel themes from interviews conductedwith four students of these teachers.

This slim penultimate chapter, however, highlights many of the prob-lems and contradictory analytic impulses readers will encounter in Media,Education and Change’s use of ethnographic data. First, for an approachadvertising itself as deconstructive, the author accepts many of herrespondents’ claims about themselves at face value. For example, whenone of her teachers boasts he has “ultimate control” over the media’simpact on his thinking as a result of his graduate coursework andsubsequent teaching, this reader exclaimed, “wait a minute, ideology has