Teaching the Media In Ireland

This chapter presents an outline of the context, provision and future prospects for Media Education in Ireland with particular reference to the junior secondary cycle. The research, carried out by as part of the Euromedia Project, was co-ordinated by the School of Media, Technological University Dublin and was carried out between January and June 2001. To date, little if any formal research has been carried on provisions for media education in Ireland. O’Halloran (1992) and Lynskey (1990) both identified the need and proposed methodologies for media education in Irish primary and secondary curricula respectively and O’Neill (2000) describes the historical context for media education in Ireland. However, no formal evaluation has yet been made of media education developments that followed during the 1990s and this chapter, it is hoped, will contribute to the long-awaited assessment of the place of media education in Irish schools