Taking into account todays’ political context in Europe, media and information literacy (hereinafter MIL) as such and especially MIL education for children and youth becomes an extremely important field to focus on. Although not all the Nordic countries have an overall national policy regarding MIL issues, the aspects of MIL seem to be in much higher degree contained within respective policy areas than in Lithuania, where unless some progress and valuable, although sporadic, initiatives, awareness on the importance of MIL and MIL education still is at the early stage of development.
Project purpose and goals
This project is initiated by the Nordic Council of Ministers Office in Lithuania and aims to create a platform for a dialogue and cooperation among Lithuanian stakeholders and their Nordic counterparts, and in a broader view to share the Nordic values such as importance of an open society, respect to and nurturing of tolerant, critically thinking and responsible citizens. The purpose is to create systemic preconditions for development of media and information literacy education based on the best Nordic experiences in integrating MIL into general and non-formal education, to create a basis for further Lithuanian (and Baltic) – Nordic cooperation in developing Media and Information Literacy education in an even broader scale.
The initiative in linked to the themes of the Strategy for Nordic Cultural Cooperation 2013-2020 (The Young Nordic Region and The Digital Nordic Region), to the Icelandic Chairmanship Programme 2014 (New Knowledge and focus on children and youth), and NCM programmes Green Growth and Sustainable Nordic Welfare.
Partners
- The project is implemented by Education Development Centre together with Nordic Council of Ministers Office in Lithuania and Ministry of Education and Science
- Nordic partners: Nordic information Centre for Media and Communication Research NORDICOM, Swedish Media Council
- Universities and other national actors in the field of media literacy education
Key events and activities
In order to achieve the purpose, the following activities are planned:
- Public awareness to actualize the concept of MIL among teachers and other stakeholders in the field of education. Compared with the Nordic countries, the concept of MIL in Lithuania is still not so widespread. Therefore there is a lack of unified MIL education.
- MIL dissemination: to map the current and future initiatives and materials on MIL in the country and supplement them with the best Nordic experiences of MIL education. There is quite much information available, which in its essence is related with MIL, but it is not correlated. Coordination of all the existing and new initiatives would contribute to their effectiveness.
- Renewal of Curriculum: to introduce MIL education in the education regulations, using the Nordic experience and practice. In order to achieve sustainability of the project results, the concept and content of MIL are to be included in the curricula regulating documents (primary, basic and secondary education standards, educational plans and common programmes).
- Competence building: to develop MIL competencies of teachers and other actors of education system (students of educational sciences, school librarians), required for MIL education in schools. This task requires developing of special methodological material, based on the identified needs within MIL education, organizing innovative forms of competence building, using the best examples of the Nordic countries.
