Media Competence or Media Literacy? On the question regarding the target value of applied media pedagogy

Abstract

In a series of four papers (Schorb 2009; Spanhel 2010; Tulodziecki 2010; Fromme and Jörissen 2010) the question regarding the main term in media pedagogy was discussed in the journal merz: Medien + Erziehung in 2009 and 2010. With reference to that debate, the present paper discusses the question whether media competence (German Medienkompetenz) or media literacy (German Medienbildung) should be the target value of applied media pedagogy. In doing so, a descriptive and a normative argument against media competence are reconstructed from the perspective of argumentation theory and both of them are refuted. The basis of these arguments turns out to be a conceptual confusion of the theoretical models of media competence with the use of this concept in the sense of subcompetences, the latter being pedagogically inadequate. After that, three criteria of adequacy are suggested for target values of applied media pedagogy. Those criteria serve as a measure to evaluate both alternatives in the conceptual framework of the debate mentioned above. As a result, media competence commends itself as that target value. Media literacy, on the other hand, is in need of a more pronounced conception and an elaboration of its interface to applied media pedagogy.