21st Annual General Meeting of ICEM

The 21st Annual Meeting of the International Council for Educational Media was held in Montreal, Canada from 6 to 11 October 1971. The organisation of the Annual Meeting and World Conference was in the hands of the Canadian full member of ICEM representing the National Film Board of Canada.     

The National Film Board of Canada's Computerised Film Booking System: A Strategy for the Future

The National Film Board is an agency of the Canadian Government which was created in 1939 to initiate and promote the production and distribution of films in the national interest, and in particular, films designed to interpret Canada to Canadians and to other countries.     

Perspectives in Science — Exploring Science,Technology and Society

Abstract

The National Film Board of Canada is breaking new ground in educational technology with a pilot series of ‘interactive’ videos entitled Perspectives in Science. The series, aimed at the junior high school level, addresses issues of environmental and sociological concern not traditionally dealt with in formal science curricula. This paper examines the rationale behind the development of the Perspectives in Science video series. Science curriculum guidelines across Canada are being re‐written to reflect a change in education strategies that will encompass not only the teaching of scientific concepts, but also the applications of those concepts, as well as the implications of utilizing those concepts. Referred to as the ‘S‐T‐S’ connection, or, Science‐Technology‐Society, the new focus has been extensively documented by the Science Council of Canada and is currently causing a stir in the science teaching community as teachers scramble to find audio‐visual productions that address these new concerns and, at the same time, engage their students.

This paper also explains the design concept for presenting materials on S‐T‐S in an interactive model. Each video includes a short, open‐ended drama, followed by a number of ‘interactive components’. The tapes are ‘interactive’ in that teachers and students can choose to follow the material linearly or search for specific segments using the running time code as an electronic page reference. The interactive components consist of documentary style discussions with Canadians involved in some aspect of the scientific, technological, and societal issues presented, animated sequences, experiments, and filmography. The videos investigate issues of water, biotechnology, and toxic waste—with additional topics on soil, forestry, and air in production.

Finally, this paper documents the formative evaluation of the series noting the favourable response of teachers and students to the design concept and material content. The findings of this research indicated that the interactive video was both timely and appropriate for science teaching in view of major changes now being made to science curricula.     

Public Education Through Community-Based Film Programs: A Report on the Environmental Film Festival in the Nation's Capital

Abstract

A leading community-based film program, the Environmental Film Festival in the Nation's Capital, is described and lessons relevant to practitioners who wish to develop similar programs in other cities are presented.     

Film Remakes As A Comparative View Of Time

Abstracts

English: This paper examines the use of film remakes as a teaching resource to give a comparative review of time. It defines a remake and describes how the scenes discussed in the paper were selected. Film remake scenes from several films from the 1940s through to the 1990s are analysed to uncover similarities and differences in many sociocultural concepts. The paper also discusses differing sequences in using remakes for different teaching effects. The conclusions highlight the ways film remakes are a rich teaching resource for time comparisons.     

Listening harder: Queer archive and biography

This article emerges from a wider study on bicultural film archiving practice. It focuses on Jonathan Dennis as a subject of (my) archiving, and as a distinctive archivist himself in relation to a specific archive at a particular moment. Dennis practice differed significantly from North American and European conventions contemporaneous with his life work. The charismatic founding director of Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision (formerly The New Zealand Film Archive) Jonathan Dennis (1953–2002) became a conduit for tensions and debates during the 1981–2002 period in relation to indigenous and non indigenous presentation of (film) archival materials. This resulted in a film archive and curatorship practice which differed significantly from that of the North American and European archives he originally sought to emulate. As a Pākehā (non Māori/indigenous New Zealander) with a strong sense of social justice he argued for an awareness of geographical location and cultural context in his work. He supported a philosophical shift in archival practice, by engaging indigenous peoples in developing creative and innovative exhibitions and programmes from the 1980s period until his death.

Note: From 1988 the official name for the New Zealand Film Archive was Ngā Kaitiaki o ngā Taonga Whitiāhua (Guardians of the Treasured Images of Light). Since August 2014 the institution is called Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision, New Zealand Archive of Film, Television and Sound Ngā Taonga Whitiāhua Me Ngā Taonga Kōrero to acknowledge the acquisition of the state-owned Television NZ Archive and Sound Archives from Radio NZ. For brevity’s sake the Archive is referred to throughout as NTSV (Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision).

Key: NTSV PP JD refers to the NTSV Personal Papers of Jonathan Dennis (uncatalogued at time of writing).     

Educational Media and ‘Agit Prop’: II. The Vertov Process repatriated

In the preceding article, a 75‐year old educational media process involving interactive multimedia, formative evaluation, and a sophisticated distance education system, was described. Although these techniques are mainstays of modem educational technology, their origins in the work of 1920s' film director Dziga Vertov have not previously been recognised. The previous article registered the techniques' roots on the Leninist ‘agit prop’ film train, and their development by Vertov for social intervention purposes. It described their essence, a feedback process whereby media footage is viewed and discussed by its producers and the people it portrays, and used as a catalyst for mass education and change. The Vertov Process culminated during the 1930s in the work of Alexander Medvedkin before being suppressed by Stalin. The article charted the subsequent influence of Vertov's educational techniques on the European schools of film documentary led in Britain by John Grierson, and in France by the avant‐garde movement and by the anthropologist film‐maker Jean Rouch. In 1996, Vertov's centennial year, the two articles indicate the film‐maker's role as an unsung founding father of the modern educational media, and political and cultural reasons for the lack of recognition which his visionary educational impact has received.

Part II of the series examines the adoption of Vertov's techniques by French‐Canadian film‐makers, notably Michel Brault and Fernand Dansereau, in the early 1960s, and the manner in which their origins were further eclipsed by cultural and political discord within Canada's National Film Board. The implications of the process for educational media practitioners in the 1990s are discussed, and its 1995 repatriation on the railroads of the former Soviet Union by a team of educational media specialists from Britain, Canada, and Ukraine are described. The Vertov Process is seen as having unique modern potential, both as a catalyst for social change and as a means to maximise the effectiveness of the media's current and future content.     

Comparative study of teaching content in teacher education programmes in Canada,Denmark, Finland and Singapore

This article presents the results of a comparative study of the content in selected teacher education programmes for primary and lower secondary teachers in Canada, Denmark, Finland and Singapore. First and foremost, the study is a comparison between teacher education programmes in, on the one hand, Canada, Finland and Singapore, all of which score highly in international comparisons such as PISA and TIMMS, and on the other hand Denmark, which receives average scores, but it also functions as a comparison between all four countries. The study covers the following subjects: pedagogy and mathematics. The study does not offer proof of any clear difference between the Danish teacher education programmes and those found in the top-performing countries. Two main findings are: (1) philosophically based professional knowledge, much of which is normative in character, forms an extensive part of the body of professional knowledge within the Danish teacher education programmes, which is not true of the programmes in the Top-3 countries and (2) the programmes in Canada and Singapore more frequently employ literature combining research-based knowledge with practical guidance and experiences, while the programmes in Denmark and Finland keep these knowledge forms separate.     

Film Research in Great Britain—Two Studies

A great deal has been written about film as a means of communication, rather less about film as an instructional tool, and less still on the study of film based on learning theory, logically designed and systematically applied to teaching situations. Yet even in this narrow sense, there is a certain amount available. Much of the research that has been done in the field of film and television was assembled in 1967 by Reid & McLennan in Research in Instructional Television and Film:(1) in the introductory essay, L. P. Greenhill points out that ‘in the final analysis, it may be that the best method of instruction is one that provides students with a wide variety of learning situations, situations which will develop the varied learning skills that they will need for continuing their education throughout their lifetimes’.     

“Springing from a sense of wonder”: classroom film and cultural learning in the 1930s

Abstract

This article makes an “exercise in the archaeology of education” and focuses on the City of Birmingham (UK) in the year 1935 where the Education Committee allowed an experiment on the use of classroom film in senior elementary schools. Arrangements were made to provide projectors, films, operators, and screens for a series of exhibits at 80 schools. The aim of the experiment was to test the value of cinema for class teaching purposes. This article argues that this experiment with sound film could equally be considered an experiment in cultural learning. The first section describes the experiment and the local context in which it took place. The second section broadens the perspective by providing context beyond the local level that puts the experiment in time and place. The third and final section picks up on some of the findings of the first two sections and considers contemporary sources, mainly articles published in the British Film Institute’s film magazine Sight and Sound, as well as recent scholarship on both educational and documentary film in order to discuss the notions of “background” and “excursive” film and to show that the experiment was a genuine adventure in cultural learning.     

Psychometric validation of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire-Short Form (CTQ-SF) in a Danish clinical sample

BackgroundThe Childhood Trauma Questionnaire – Short Form (CTQ-SF) is a widely utilized self-report instrument in the assessment and characterization of childhood trauma. Yet, research on the instrument’s psychometric properties in clinical samples is sparse, and the Danish version of the CTQ-SF has not been previously evaluated in clinical samples.ObjectivesTo examine the structural validity, internal consistency reliability, and multi-method convergent validity of the CTQ-SF in a heterogenous clinical sample from Denmark.Participants and settingThe study was based on data from four Danish clinical samples (N = 393): 1) Outpatients diagnosed with personality disorders, 2) Patients commencing psychiatric treatment for non-affective first-episode psychosis, 3) Patients diagnosed with first-episode or prolonged depression recruited from general practitioners and an outpatient mood disorder clinic, and 4) detained delinquent boys.MethodsConfirmatory factor analysis was used to explore structural validity. Also, we calculated internal consistency and multi-method convergent validity with interview-based ratings of adverse parenting.ResultsConfirmatory factor analyses indicated that the five-factor structure described in CTQ-SF manual with three error correlated items best fitted the data, as compared to various other models. Coefficients of congruence also supported factorial similarity across countries (i.e. US substance abuser and a mixed Brazilian sample). Internal consistency reliability was acceptable and comparable to estimates previously published. Multi-method convergent validity associations further corroborated the validity of the CTQ-SF.ConclusionThese findings provide support for the reliability and validity of the Danish version of the CTQ-SF in clinical samples.     

Social Activism Through Theater

ABSTRACT

Social Activism Through Theater” chronicles the author's first full year as a teaching artist in New York City, including the launch of National Queer Theater and its inaugural show, Speechless, as well as his experiences investigating film and storytelling with teenagers at the Refugee Youth Summer Academy.     

Audio-Visual aids in education - the beginning

The many achievements of the Educational Foundation for Visual Aids and the National Committee for Audio-Visual Aids to Education, under the leadership of the late Dr J A Harrison from their inception until his death last year, might lead many ‘Educational Media’ leaders to think that the audio-visual movement in Education was essentially a postwar development. That this is not so is evidenced by the fact that more classroom teaching films were being made in Britain n i each of the years 1934—39 than are being made today! There were annual conferences organised by the British Film Institute and the Educational Handwork Association; there were frequent articles on the subject and reviews of new films in Sight & Sound, World Film News, The Schoolmaster, The Times Educational Supplement, British Journal of Photography, even one on Schools' television etc, and several books had been published: ‘The Cinema in Education’ in 1925, ‘Report on Educational and Documentary Films’ by the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1930; ‘The Film in National Life’ 1932; ‘The Film in the Classroom’ 1932; ‘The Cinema in School’ 1933; ‘The Film in the School’ 1935; etc.     

The vocational turn of adult education in Denmark – an analysis of adult education policy from the late 1990s

ABSTRACT

Denmark has a strong and versatile tradition of adult education. Over a long historical period, adult education for public enlightenment and leisure, for continuing study and for vocational and professional competence have been developed, been made part of state policy and been used by citizens. But in recent years the public and political presence of Danish adult education has changed. While education policy issues generally abound in public and political debates, adult education is given much less attention than earlier. In this article, we trace the causes of this and conclude that it reflects a turn towards focusing on vocational types of adult education and a relocation of adult education policy to networks linking the state and the social partners. Drawing on theories of policy streams, policy networks and the competition state, we provide a historical analysis of Danish adult education reforms during the past two decades and document how the vocational turn has manifested itself.     

Making Movies Matter or Whatever Happened to the Sabre‐Tooth Curriculum?

This paper argues that media education has developed its own orthodoxies that are preventing it both from addressing the realities of the media as they exist today, and from being taken seriously by policy‐makers. The example of Making Movies Matter, the 1999 report of the Film Education Working Group, shows how a policy‐making ‘window’ can be exploited, not only to make new arguments for media education, but also to construct new frameworks for teaching and learning. The report had also provided the British Film Institute with a new agenda for UK‐wide activities designed to develop education about the moving image media. A version of this paper was originally presented at the Summit 2000 conference in Toronto, Canada, in May 2000.     

Danish and Finnish PISA results in a comparative, qualitative perspective: How can the stable and distinct differences between the Danish and Finnish PISA results be explained?

The research project presented in this article was designed to provide a better understanding of the stable and significant differences in the PISA results between two otherwise very similar Nordic welfare states, Denmark and Finland. In the PISA studies, Finnish students repeatedly achieve the highest Nordic (and partly worldwide) scores in e.g. reading, science and math, while Danish students score lower. Even though Denmark has one of the world’s most expensive educational systems, the OECD ranks the Finnish school system as the world’s best both in terms of quality and equity (OECD 2004). The basic research question is why these differences continue to persist. The case study methodology was mainly inspired by Kirsti Klette’s classroom research (Klette 2003) which involves both interviews and observations. Thus, the overall design could be labeled mixed methods (Johnson and Onwuegbuzie Educational Researcher, 33(7): 14-26, 2004). Five regular public schools in each country were sampled for the comparative classroom studies. The basic theoretical approaches follow Hundeide’s theory of pedagogical communication and relations (2003) and Csikszentmihalyi’s flow-theory (1992). Both this study and statistical studies (S?rensen 2008) show that the difference in the Danish and Finnish PISA results mainly consists in the relatively better score by the lowest scoring 25% of the Finnish pupils compared to the lowest scoring Danish quartile. The results of this study point to a number of possible classroom related reasons why the Finnish school system can produce a better outcome for the lowest scoring quartile of pupils. These reasons are presented and discussed in the article. The study underlines the need to focus more on good classroom management in Denmark—and recommends further international, comparative research in order better to understand the huge differences shown in large scale international programmes such as PISA, PIRLS and TIMMS. The study also reveal the need for more knowledge about inclusive classroom practices, the use of teacher assistants and free, healthy school meals for all pupils.     

The links between grammar and spelling: A cognitive hurdle in deep orthographies?

A cross-sectional study tested Danish students' mastery of links between grammar and spelling (cf. the English link between past tense verbs and the -ed spelling for a word final /t/, e.g., miss ed vs. mis t). One hundred and forty-two students aged 10–17 spelled pseudo-word items with ambiguous phonemes, where the choice between a 'conditional' spelling (cf. English ed for /t/) and a simple spelling (cf. t for /t/) was predictable from the grammatical context but not from the sound. Overgeneralisations (conditional spellings used where simple spellings were appropriate) were controlled to obtain pure measures of grammatical spelling competence. The oldest group of participants performed near ceiling on four of five spelling problems studied while three younger groups in the experiment never did. The nature of the apparent grammatical hurdle in Danish spelling acquisition is discussed.     

Redesigning an advanced master's degree for early childhood professionals in alignment with NBPTS and NAEYC standards

Abstract

This article describes the standards‐based redesign of one university's advanced master's degree program for early childhood practitioners. It discusses the philosophy and goals, degree components, and features that aligned with standards from the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards and the National Association for the Education of Young Children guidelines for advanced degree programs.     

A Retrospective View of the National Board Certification Process

National Board Certification (NBC) is a voluntary yet advanced teaching credential that goes beyond the typical state licensure requirement (NEA, 2015 National Education Association (NEA). (2015). National Board Certification of Teachers. Retrieved from http://www.nea.org/home/31738.htm [Google Scholar]). The purpose of this study is to determine the perspectives of teachers who have completed and achieved NBC, and specifically how it has impacted them as classroom teachers. Using data collected via a survey, this study provides an overview of the perspectives of 496 National Board Certified Teachers centered on the Five Core Propositions of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. The findings of this study revealed statistical significance on teachers’ reported growth in areas such as leadership, effective instruction, and subject mastery as a result of NBC. Findings also suggest positive change on each of the Five Core Propositions, such as "teachers are committed to students and their learning," as reported by teachers.     

Violent crime against children with disabilities: A nationwide prospective birth cohort-study

BackgroundThe rate of violent victimization against children with disabilities is thought to be lower than the rate for children without disabilities but several studies shows otherwise.ObjectiveThe study focuses on examining violent crime against children with disabilities and explaining differences in victimization, in order to elucidate to what extent types of disability, family disadvantages, gender, high-risk behavior, location and indicator of ethnic minority (e.g. non-Danish citizens) influence adolescents’ risk of violent victimization. Previous population studies in this area lack scientifically sound research methodology and results are weak or inconclusive.MethodData is based on a national study of reported violent crime against children in Denmark aged between 7 and 18 years, using total birth cohorts (N = 678,000). Data on types of disability were collected from the Danish national inpatient register. Violent-crime data were extracted from Danish police records. Within the birth cohorts studied, 3.5% of children had experienced a violent crime. A discrete-time Cox model was used for the statistical analysis, which included an extended list of potential risk factors to adjust for confounding.ResultsChildren with disabilities are more likely to be victims of a reported violent crime than non-disabled children – ADHD odds ratio: 2.7 (2.6–2.8), mental retardation: 2.7 (2.6–2.7), autism 2.6 (2.5–2.7), loss of hearing 1.4 (1.2–1.5), brain injury: 1.8 (1.7–1.9), physical disabilities 1.4 (1.2–1.5), and blindness 2.0 (1.4–2.8). Speech disability, epilepsy, stuttering, and dyslexia were not associated with increased risk of violent victimization, when adjusted for confounding risk factors and age.ConclusionsThe results of our study provide empirical insight into the first-time prevalence of victimization among children with disability, and into the predicative association between family disadvantages and victimization.