SCHOOL POLICY GUIDELINES

 

“Hardly any question polarises our kindergartens and schools as much as that of the media. The Corona era has brought the media even more into the foreground and made these polarities more self-evident. This makes it all the more important to ask what kind of living environment we want to create for our children. Are we as teachers, as mothers or fathers, for or against the use of media? Answering this is seemingly simple at first.

What is true to life, but also uncomfortable about a pedagogical practice that changes with the course of a child’s life, is that there is precisely no dogma, but rather many factors and parameters. These include the age and constitution of the child, the social and cultural environment, the living conditions and habits of the parents or the patchwork family.” (Birgit Krohmer, 2020)

Even when a school or kindergarten has established their own media education curriculum, there is a clear need to align ways of dealing with media in formal education settings with those at home. Otherwise children get confused, parents or teachers frustrated and the learning opportunity compromised. Therefore, it is paramount for both teachers and parents to join in and make clear agreements on this issue.

The HERMMES partners are dedicating an internal working group to explore the task of creating a school policy guidelines regarding media usage. Such guidelines will be general, adaptable to diverse educational communities and serve as a framework within which individual communities are invited to build their own rules, agreements and policies.

Once the HERMMES school policy guidelines are ready, they will be shared on this page.