Scriptwriting as pedagogy: vocational education for media production and the recontextualisation of practice

Abstract

A claim to the ‘professionalism’ of practice learned on media production courses begs the question: are we teaching what we claim to teach? This paper argues that recontextualisation, successive moves between sociologically distinct contexts, has a transformational impact on and is the principal feature of the pedagogy. The case study looks at a collaborative learning activity, scriptwriting, on a media production course in a UK higher education institution. A sociological perspective is applied and data are viewed through the lens of recontextualisation theory, primarily Social Activity Method, revealing where and how students access explicit and tacit principles and rules of scriptwriting, integration of practice principles and ‘rules of the game’. The article raises questions about whether evaluation and assessment criteria are clear and correlate to what is being taught. The concern is that if principles of recontextualisation are neglected, the constitution of the activity and its assessment can establish an internal contradiction that cannot be resolved by the learner. This potentially causes students to misrecognise their own learning. Neglect of principles of recontextualisation has the potential to distort pedagogy and outcomes in this field.