Given the sensitive nature of sex education, it will come as no surprise, that issues and problems exist with the current approaches to teaching sexual education in a school setting, especially when the media gets involved.

Albury (2013), comments on this, saying that the media is often a source of “risky sexual content”. Albury outlines a lack of listening to the other side in media, because it would change the meaning of media literacy as an issue, as its not “who has a voice but who is heard that matters”.  Another issue is teachers aren’t considering mediated learning and often choose novels over television for students to analyse. This is an issue because students use various other types of media every day, however they aren’t getting the opportunity to think critically about them. The definition of media keeps changing as new social media platforms are created, bringing different ways to delivering messages regarding sexuality to the masses. These messages are often unregulated, and messages are skewed, causing further issues.

Educators need to be keeping up to date with what social media their students are using and understand how they are using it. By doing so, these platforms can be implemented into classwork to engage students in how to analyse media and get them thinking about messages broadcast to the world. Furthermore, educators need to be open minded about the texts they present their students with, to keep students interested and engaged in class.

In class this week, we were asked to take a selfie of ourselves that did not include our face. This selfie had to be of something that your friends would recognise as you. I chose to take a photograph of my keys. My keys are typically attached to my belt loops by a carabiner and make noise as I walk, making me recognisable to the people closest to me- typically people I work with or do scouting with, because they are constantly making comment of the noise. This leads to me getting awkward and putting the keys in my pocket. This was an interesting activity, as it forced me to reflect on who I am outside of my physical appearance and wasn’t as easy as one would think. This would fit well into Unit 1 and 2, Area of Study One.

Potential challenges for working with media can include the dangers, safety of and ethical side of working with the media and what can and can’t be shown to children, media biases, mixed media messages, what may distract students and technological problems.

REFERENCES

Albury, K. (2013). Young people, media and sexual learning: Rethinking representation. Sex Education, 13, S32.