Critical Documentary Making: an Action Research to Develop Pedagogy for the 21 Century

This work is part of a larger action research project aiming to establish critical documentary making as a classroom activity in special needs and mainstream schools. The first part, the Bachelor’s thesis, ascertained the rationale for critical documentary making as a tool for critical pedagogy in schools. The second part, this Master’s thesis, proposes a theoretical framework and pedagogical principles to guide critical documentary making activities in schools. Data from two projects in Finland, one in a hospital secondary school and the other in an international primary school, provided information regarding pupils’ experiences from critical documentary making projects. The third phase, a longitudinal action research for doctoral studies, will study, in Finnish and International contexts, teacher training requirements to support the implementation of critical documentary making in school classrooms. The foundations for the theoretical framework were derived from a literature study of four diverse, but not unrelated concepts; critical pedagogy, collaborative learning, peer tutoring, and participatory documentary. Based on key characteristics of these concepts and drawing on my teaching experiences prior to the research, I identified seven pedagogical principles to guide critical documentary making activities in the classroom: pupil-centred; conscientising, action driven, and reflective; collaborative; dialogical; empowering; accessible; and integrated. The action research projects used equipment and software programmes already available in the schools, and the projects were within the scope of the Finnish National Core Curriculum for Basic Education and the International Baccalaureate Middle Years Programme. The simple documentary making processes developed in the research do not require teachers to have a background in ICT, media education, or film-making. In accordance with the democratic and empowering elements of critical pedagogy and action research, pupils chose generative themes to study and collaboratively make critical documentaries about, for a peer audience. The data demonstrated that critical documentary making is a pedagogically rich classroom activity, providing holistic experiences for pupils through connecting school life with the outside world; facilitating pupils’ explorations of societal issues which may support a sense of belonging to the wider community; empowering pupils to develop skills which can be used for voice and to make a difference; and enabling pupils to learn to critically read the media and become competent with information and communication technology which is transferable to other school activities. Pupils with special educational needs and mainstream pupils described critical documentary making as a challenging, motivating and empowering classroom activity. The data also indicated that critical documentary making contributes towards pupils’ transformative learning, conscientisation, self-reflection, and social and technological skill development, as well as being a potential tool for social change.