A group of seven European entities, universities, research centres, government offices and Non Governmental Organizations, will develop during 2012 and 2013 the European Media Literacy Education Study (EMEDUS). The initiative was selected through a public call made by the Transversal Programme of the Lifelong Learning Programme of the European Commission’s Education and Culture General Direction, under its “Key Activity 1”: Studies and Comparative Research.
The initiative, that has an execution period of two years and will be 75% funded by the European Commission’s Lifelong Learning Programme, has the objective of developing a comparative analysis of the implementation of Media Education in the 27 European Union countries. The EMEDUS Project has three specific focal points of attention (formal curricula, informal education and non formal education directed at disadvantaged groups). Its aim is to identify and compare good practices in Media Education that have generated positive impacts in the economic, social, cultural and political fields with respect to different factors among the Member States.
The EMEDUS Project is specifically oriented to strengthening and updating education policy recommendations in the media literacy field among EU members and other European countries. Another objective of the initiative is to analyse teachers’ educational resources, their skills, training and level of media competences.
The association that will develop EMEDUS is composed of the European Association for Viewers’ Interest (EAVI, Brussels), led by Paolo Celot, General Secretary of the NGO; the Communication and Society Research Centre (CECS) of the University of Minho (Portugal), whose head is Manuel Pinto; the Hungarian Institute for Educational Research and Development (HIERD/OFI, Hungary), guided by György Jakab; the Istituto di Studi Politici Economici e Sociali (EURISPES, Italy), directed by Marco Ricceri; the School of Communication and Media (SCM, Slovakia), managed by Andrej Skolkay; and the Pedagogical University of Krakow through its European Center for Lifelong Learning and Multimedia Education (PUK, Poland), coordinated by Barbara Kedzierska. The EMEDUS Project is coordinated by the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, (UAB, Spain), which also acts as Scientific Director of the project through the Gabinete de Comunicación y Educación, a research group led by José Manuel Pérez Tornero and attached to the Department of Journalism and Communication Studies.
The first step of the project -which will be developed between January and July 2012- is the study of the literature and main documentation sources that exist relating to media education within the 27 EU Members. From the collected information the EMEDUS Project will start the development of specialised work packages under the focal point of attention described above.
Finally, the EMEDUS Project will seek to acquire a solid source of sustainability through the establishment of a Media Education European Observatory, which will have the intention of creating a reference repository of Media Literacy information and activities registered in the EU. The Media Education European Observatory also has the objective of fostering Media and Information Literacy in Europe.
The EMEDUS Project has a contact and permanent attention workplace located at Office 049 in the Faculty of Communication Sciences at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), Spain. The email for information is pr.emedus@uab.cat
Source: http://www.emedus.org/2012/02/educative-institutions-network-develops.html