Teacher Students’ Designing Media Education for Older People: Creative and Need-Based Pedagogies Emphasized

This study develops Finnish teacher education by exploring the perspectives of teacher student’s on older people’s media education and equipping teacher students to better support older people’s media literacies. Student teams designed media-literacy interventions in the context of a course, “Older People, Media Education, and Facilitation of Learning,” offered in separated teacher pedagogical studies at one Finnish University during the academic year 2019‒2020. Research participants included 22 teacher students and 15 stakeholders (older people and professionals working with older people). The research data consists of students’ designs and presentations on how media education should be implemented for older people as well as feedback from stakeholders. The research data was collected during the course and evaluation workshop organized at the end of the course as part of an ongoing project. Results indicate that creative and need-based pedagogies were emphasized and course development should be continued in light of the results.