How can BTEC teachers support young people to be prepared for careers in the media industries? A reflection on pedagogy

Abstract

There are major discrepancies between the skills required in the media industries, and those BTEC (Business and Technology Education Council) Level 3 students develop during their course. While academics have described these courses as ‘pre-vocational’, there is an expectation from students, parents and now the Government that BTECs, which are more practical than A Levels, will offer young people preparation for employment. However, there are distinct differences in the skills required by the media industries and those taught on such courses. While pre-existing literature acknowledges this issue in part, it does not offer potential pedagogical solutions. Recent reforms in vocational education will effect at policy level but offer little practical support for teachers. This action research project proposes potential teaching and learning strategies to help narrow the gap between BTEC media education (one of the most popular courses perceived to be vocational in the United Kingdom) and the skills particularly of high demand in today's industries. The project was organised as part of a Twenty-First Century Learning Alliance teacher research fellowship, which enables teachers to investigate problems that affect their own classroom practice.

Keywords:

• BTEC
• vocational media
• pedagogy
• media training

Acknowledgements

I thank the Twenty-First Century Learning Alliance for their support with developing this project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Victoria Grace Walden was awarded a teacher research fellowship when she was a part-time sixth form lecturer of media in Surrey which enabled her to perform this project. She is now concentrating on her PhD at Queen Mary University of London, focusing on cinematic materiality and Holocaust memory. She has presented several training events for media and film studies teachers and developed resources, including her forthcoming book Studying Hammer Horror.

ORCID

Victoria Grace Walden http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5298-8810

Notes

1. The questionnaires were distributed to students from two different institutions to test the relevance of the research outside of my organisation. These were distributed at different times to keep anonymity but so that I could see if there were any specific differences between the two. The average results were similar proving that there was scope for this research to have relevance beyond the sixth form in which I was working.

2. The flipped classroom technique (the notion of giving students subject information before a lesson that focuses on a particular topic) was used to remove the dominance of teacher-led instruction, enabling the students to have a preliminary idea of the topic before each session so that activities could concentrate on putting their knowledge into practice. I have left out a detailed discussion of this attribution because it is not specifically relevant to vocational pedagogy.

3. The full teaching pack and resources can be found at: http://themediabusinessproject.wordpress.com/