Abstract
Our lives are increasingly moving into an online world that is overflowing with media messages. This is one of the reasons why there is an increasing urgency in the public sphere about the need to increase our media and digital literacy. Attention is particularly focused on the youngest generation, which is considered to be the most vulnerable. At the same time, young people and adolescents spend an enormous amount of time with the media, so it is appropriate to educate them in this regard. This role is most often attributed by society to the schools that pupils attend, and specifically to the teachers there. But for teachers, who themselves are often groping in the world of media and struggling with a lack of time, this is a challenging task.
Media education has been taught in Czech primary and secondary schools since 2005 as one of six so-called cross-cutting themes. In practice, this means that the form and concept of this topic is almost entirely up to teachers, their capabilities and motivation. As summarised by Šťastná, Wolák and Jirák (2014), systemic support for teachers has been a major problem in the implementation of media education from the outset. Whether it is the lack of opportunities for formal and informal education or quality and up-to-date teaching materials. An overview of media education teaching materials in the Czech Republic was prepared by Radim Wolák (2011, 2013). However, as the media world has changed significantly over the last decade, many of the materials listed can now be considered outdated. Currently available materials, including those from NGOs, companies and teachers, are mapped by Kopecký and Voráč (2022). Overall, there is an abundance of freely available teaching materials for media education today, but because they can be created and shared by anyone, they vary widely in quality (Kopecký & Voráč, 2022). There is also a lack of signposting for collecting these materials, so they do not reach as many teachers (Šťastná, 2017). That there is a sufficient amount of teaching materials, but they are not always of high quality, is also confirmed by some of the participants in the qualitative study I conducted in the spring and summer of 2021. Eleven secondary school teachers and lecturers from non-profit organizations were asked in semi-structured interviews how they perceived the available teaching materials. Study participants were also asked what they thought appropriate instructional material should look like. The findings were provided to digital design students from Tomas Bata University in Zlín, who subsequently used them to create interactive teaching materials. Using teachers' suggestions to create specific design materials that would help them in their work is a rather unique practice. The qualitative research conducted is therefore interesting and may be of use to other researchers who may wish to attempt something similar in any other educational area. The research also sheds light on how media education teachers evaluate the available materials and reveals why the current provision is unsatisfactory.