This study examined the potential of entertainment-education (E-E) for promoting engagement with a science issue. It was assumed that certain entertaining features of a media experience increase viewers' perceived knowledge about an issue. Drawing on different theoretical models of E-E and on persuasive effects of narrative media messages, three…

In this article, findings are presented from a recently completed study conducted with teacher candidates from an educational foundations course in which films were used as part of the text to encourage critical discussion. The work explores teacher candidates' experiences with using films as means to develop critical and creative thinking about…

This study aims to determine language learners' autonomy, self-evaluation levels and to examine the predictive power of these two variables on language achievement. The study was designed as mixed method design and was conducted with 108 high school students. Data were collected through an autonomy scale, a self-evaluation scale, schools record on…

This paper describes an exploratory study observing the use of "Minecraft" (a popular sandbox style online video game environment) in a high school English literature classroom. We use Piaget and Inhelder's (1969) constructivist theories about the formal operational stage of development to interpret the concepts of plot and…

This study reexamined PowerPoint's potential to enhance traditional pedagogical practices in higher education. The study addressed (1) the conditions under which PowerPoint meets students' needs in typical lecture-based classrooms, (2) whether professors consider PowerPoint-based lectures more effective than lectures supported by material on…

A fun part of the curriculum that the authors used in their Media Literacy instruction was comparing written creations to the mediation of the same content. The material they used included poetry, such as Robert Frost poems, and short stories, including the work of O. Henry and Arthur Conan Doyle. Many media works are available where the producers…

In this article, the author explores the pedagogical value of cinema's capacity to offer a "decentered" mode of perspective for the audience. The author illustrates a film's ability to present a different perspective with reference to Sean Penn's "The Pledge" (2001) and Ivan Sen's "Beneath Clouds" (2002), which show how cinema allows viewers to…

In response to the February 14, 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, President Donald Trump established the Federal Commission on School Safety to review safety practices and make meaningful and actionable recommendations of best practices to keep students safe. The Commission conducted field visits,…

Context: The documentary film about U.S. education reform, "Waiting for 'Superman'," was met with acclaim and controversy when released to theaters in 2010, and again when launching its grassroots "host a screening" campaign in 2011. The campaign ran concurrent with 2011 state legislative sessions, during which several states…

Films have been used to present health messages throughout the history of the medium. The purpose of this article is to describe pictures from the silent film era that were designed to educate people about health issues. Films still available in at least one format were reviewed. Published reviews were also used to obtain information about these…

Traffic crashes remain an important cause of injury and death among young people. The aim of the current study was to examine whether adolescents' viewing of particular television genres predicted later risky driving. Data were collected with a two-wave panel survey (N = 426); structural equation modeling was used to examine the relationships…

To explore young adolescents' interest in engineering as a future career, we examined the influence of gender and grade level on participants' (N = 197, aged 10-13) views of engineering. One group (107 students) viewed a brief engineering video and wrote why they felt the same or different about engineering following the video. Qualitative…

This article argues that while a semiotic analysis of composition in the screen, page and image has significant heuristic value, this would be further enhanced were it also to take into account surface and depth. It is argued that these two aspects of composition are critical for successful reading/viewing of images, and especially for digital…

When audience members consider aesthetic objects and/or works of art, they typically bring to their consideration a number of perspectives through which the object is considered. These include background beliefs, personal associations, taste preferences, and attitudes and values. Using Alan Goldman's aesthetic value theory as a platform, I…

Desktop MCs work in the space of the desktop, choreographing content using multiple applications. For the desktop MC, new technologies allow for new combinatory forms of composition.