Introduction

Baudelaire, the nineteenth century French poet and art critic who scorned early efforts at photography, claiming it would corrupt art, could never have imagined the current state of the art and importance of photography in today’s world. “It is time, then, for it to return to its true duty, which is to be the servant of the sciences and arts — but the very humble servant, like printing or shorthand, which have neither created nor supplemented literature.” He went on to warn, “But if [photography is] allowed to encroach upon the domain of the impalpable and the imaginary, upon anything whose value depends solely upon the addition of something of a man’s soul, then it will be so much the worse for us” (in Baudelaire, 2017: 231–233).

Many years of technological development later, we could conclude that the main role of photography and imagery in general continues to be that of a servant, albeit “a very humble servant” of the sciences and the arts, and in terms of teacher training, also of education in these fields.

In all these years, photography and the language of imagery, despite their importance and ubiquity, do not seem to have merited a leading position in school curricula or teacher training. In teaching, photography is used mainly for delivering presentations and as a teaching aid in various subjects. In teacher training, aside from technical education, it is only used to analyse the didactic potential of imagery and its function at the service of other arts and sciences. Visual literacy, media education, photography as art, are largely ignored in both basic education and teacher training.

Media Literacy in Teacher Training

Before discussing any possible relationship between photography and education, it is important to highlight the need to introduce audio-visual and media literacy education in basic teacher training.

Since the introduction of Educational Technology in the last century, both photography and other new informational and audio-visual technologies have found their way into the sphere of education as potential facilitators of learning; as tools rather than as a subject of study and reflection. Perhaps due more to external social pressure than the commitment of education professionals and experts, new technological devices have been incorporated into the classroom as other markets, such as that of domestic appliances or business, have become saturated. In other words, cameras, video recorders and computers, for example, were introduced into educational centres once they had already been widely known and used in other settings, such as business or the home. Although these products, unlike whiteboards or overhead projectors, are not specifically manufactured for the classroom, in Educational Technology their more teaching-related characteristics and advantages have been highlighted to justify, albeit “a posteriori”, their acquisition and use.

Audio-visual devices and computers undoubtedly have considerable educational potential, and although they were not designed for education, specific educational and instructive programmes have been developed for both television and computers, and classroom activities can be programmed to take advantage of the benefits of each new device in the teaching–learning processes.

Teacher training in the use of these new media resources has always included courses on how to operate them before going on to describe their potential use as a teaching tool. As the complexity and number of devices have increased with digitization, teacher training has prioritised the technological or instrumental dimension over educational aspects (Bautista, 2014). Several experts have warned of this bias, pointing out that the most important thing for teachers is not to know how to use these devices, but when and why to use them, always trying to optimize their possible educational advantages and minimize their drawbacks.

If the role of media in education could be limited to their use as a teaching tool, it would be logical to focus teacher training in ICT and digital media on their technological and didactic dimensions. We know, however, that the educational potential of digital media, their ability to influence the opinions, beliefs and attitudes of users, is currently more important than any role we can assign them as teaching tools in formal education.

As early as 1980, UNICEF recognized, with some optimism, the potential of digital media as agents of informal education. They dubbed them “the third channel”, after formal and non-formal education, and defined them as “all the available instruments and information, communication, and social action channels that can be used to help transmit basic knowledge and inform and educate the population regarding social issues” (UNICEF, 1990).

With the advent of the Internet, this third channel has overflowed and flooded schools and other educational institutions. Our students are almost permanently subject to a barrage of increasingly visual information that is shared on social networks and different virtual communities. It is becoming increasingly difficult to identify the values and ideas inevitably implicit in viral messages, in YouTube videos, and in web pages due to the amount of information (infoxication) and the lack of control. In the last century, educommunication was required to develop skills in the critical appraisal of mass media; it is now also needed to join virtual communities, to create and interpret messages responsibly, to learn to value and read not only verbal language, but also multimedia documents, and, in short, to be twenty-first century citizens with all our rights and duties.

If media education is a prerequisite for anyone who is part of the Information Society, it should also be a mandatory subject in teacher training in ICT and digital media. With regard to ICT and media training, from a purely educational, as opposed to instructive, point of view, digital media or digital literacy in teachers is today far more important and necessary than the acquisition of the technological and teaching skills which are prioritised in pre-service and in-service training programmes.

The tendency to prioritize technological and instructive aspects over training in ICT could be a logical consequence of a neoliberal approach, where results matter more than processes, and where these results must be quantitatively measurable. As we have already pointed out in Gutiérrez and Torrego (2018), governments and educational institutions appear to have reached an overall consensus with regard to competence-based education. Teachers at different levels, textbook authors, and educational authorities work together to formulate basic education and teacher training in terms of competencies. In this respect, the Institute of Educational Technology and Teacher Training (INTEF, in its Spanish acronym) published its meticulous 2017 Common Framework for the Digital Competence of Educators (INTEF, 2017).

UNESCO had previously published its “ICT Competency Framework for Teachers”, a document that, according to its authors, was created to inform education policy makers, teacher trainers, vocational trainers and in-service teachers about the role of ICT in education reform (UNESCO, 2011).

Although we believe it is essential for teachers to develop clearly definable and assessable ICT skills, in this chapter we are calling for teacher media literacy, so we warn the reader that current competence-based models focus on the technical and operational aspects of media devices more than media literacy education. Potter and McDougall (2017: 85), for example, question both US and European competency frameworks for media literacy, and ask whether this competency model does not ignore two important dimensions that underlie all media literacy education: cultural studies and social literacy.

After publishing its aforementioned ICT competency for teachers, UNESCO went on to release a new document on media and information literacy (Wilson et al., 2011) for teachers, or what every teacher should know about media literacy and how to teach it. This new document, however, was not as influential as the publication on ICT competency for teachers—hardly surprising in a country where neither audio-visual literacy nor educommunication have been given the importance they deserve in the digital age.

One of the main objectives of media literacy education is to raise awareness among the general public, mostly ICT users, of how the media influence their education, how the images they offer us gradually shape the way we see the world around us and the people in it. In the case of teachers and educators, understanding the educational potential of the media will encourage them to assess their educational potential inside and outside the classroom in awareness campaigns, values education, citizenship education, etc.

Teachers, particularly those that include the media and ICT in their subject content, will also be responsible for the media literacy of their students and for media education. Like languages or mathematics, which have their own teaching methods (Gutiérrez & Torrego, 2018), media education should be included in teacher training programmes in new technologies.

The foregoing authors propose a model for teacher training in ICT and digital media consisting of five general subject blocks that cover the training of different teachers and educators: (1) Multiple literacy in the digital age; (2) Media and digital environments as agents of informal education; (3) Integration of digital media and technologies in the curriculum as teaching tools; (4) Integration of ICT and media in the curriculum as a study subject. Media education in formal education; and (5) Media education in university education and pre-service teacher training.

A schematic diagram displays the five general subject blocks for different teachers and educators.

The three basic dimensions of ICT and media training of all teachers, irrespective of their level or subject specialty, are depicted in the first three concentric circles of the graph of this model. In the first place, the competence all teachers should have as members of the Information Society, i.e. media and digital literacy, but which cannot be taken for granted, particularly among older teachers.

In the last two decades of the twentieth century, a series of key concepts of critical media literacy education in schools were developed in Canada (Duncan et al., 1989), based on the approach put forward by Len Masterman (Masterman, 1985; Masterman & Thompson, 1980).

These key concepts (media constructions, representations, institutions and audiences), which formed the basis for the golden age of media education in various anglosphere countries in the 1990s, could also be valid today if the new literacies, “trans-literacies” or “multiliteracies” are taught from a critical perspective instead of focussing on the characteristics of digital technology or the needs of the market.

The time is right, since according to Ollé et al. (2004), in the first years of this millennium, when the hegemony of Mass Media 1.0 gave way to that of the so-called “participatory” media 2.0, critical pedagogy experienced a worldwide boom based on new utopia (such as “Another world is possible”), on the new approach to social and educational theories (Habermas, Chomsky, Freire), and on new transformative educational practices (such as learning communities or democratic schools).

We agree with Jolls and Wilson (2014) that “new media” neither change the essence of media education, nor modify its growing importance for social development. However, we would point out that although these new media, particularly digital photography and video, have not changed the essence of media education, they have changed its content and practices to the extent that we need to establish and clarify the basic principles or essence of liberating media literacy currently obscured by the glamour of digital technologies.

These key concepts inherited from digital media education of the last century would, according to Gutiérrez (2008), give rise to five basic contents that are also applicable to digital photography and new media:

  • The photographs and documents released by the media are not mere reflections of the reality they represent, not windows on the world, not pieces of reality embodied in a medium—they are constructions, ways of representing a reality.

  • Media companies are complicated networks with considerable commercial and ideological interests that are reflected in the products they create and the way these are distributed.

  • Audiences are considered as “products” that are offered to advertisers and data management companies for commercial purposes.

  • The media act as educators of their audience, transmitting an ideology and making a decisive contribution to the creation of a particular cultural identity or type of society.

The media literacy of any individual, therefore, involves becoming aware of the potential of the media as agents of informal education. Therefore, we need to add the teacher’s need to become aware of the educational potential of the media and ICTs to the second circle of our graph. The teacher, being an educator, must have a greater understanding of the educational potential of the media than would be expected of other individuals, greater than that of first level literacy expected of any other person or student.

Third, we need to add the specific training undergone by the teacher as an educator: understanding the educational potential of each new medium—in our case of photography—and its possible advantages and disadvantages as a tool to facilitate the teaching–learning processes in the instructive and practical dimensions of education.

Levels four and five, as can be seen in the graph, are not applicable to any teacher at any level, but only to those who teach ICT or media-related subjects, such as Photography, Computer Science, Communication or Media Education (level 4), or teachers in training in these subjects (level 5).

Photography in the Development of Media Literacy: A Bit of History

As discussed above, we consider media education to be part of basic literacy, applicable to both students and teachers at any level. In this section, when we refer to the development of media literacy, we mean not only students in compulsory education, but any other person, and in particular teachers, who in many cases find themselves responsible for their own media literacy and that of their students.

According to authors such as Fedorov (2008), media literacy education began in France during the 1920s with the cinema club movement and its clear educational intent. This initiative, launched by the Offices regionaux du cinema educateur, coincided with the introduction of photography, cine films, and the gramophone in schools by Freinet and his wife Elise, who carried on the tradition of the “new school” and incorporated into their class the most modern techniques of their time, such as typesetting, photographic and video cameras, cine films, and the tape recorder.

Freinet, whom Fedorov (2008) considers one of the founders of media literacy education, explained that photography and cine films were not simply means of entertainment or teaching resources, but “the new way of thinking and personal expression” (Freinet, 1963: 12). This is why this pioneering French teacher believed that schools should teach the language of audio-visual media in the same way as basic principles of art were taught.

However, these and similar experiences in Europe with state-of-the-art photography or cine films in the first half of the twentieth century can be considered isolated events or individual initiatives that almost always involved the introduction of cine films into the classroom, such as the case of the British Film Institute in the United Kingdom. Media literacy was not introduced into formal education until the 1950s and 1960s. Until then, educational institutions had ignored cameras and the media, and newspapers, comics and other elements of popular culture were banned from the classroom—hardly surprising if we bear in mind that today new media such as telephones and other mobile devices are not allowed in the classroom.

In the second half of the twentieth century, the ubiquity and influence of television made it inevitable that not only the pioneers of audio-visual education, but also formal education systems would consider its introduction into school curricula. This introduction of mass media, film, press, radio and television can be approached from two basic perspectives:

  • The contents of films, television programmes and popular culture were considered to have a major (usually negative) influence on education.

  • Audio-visual language, television, cameras (photographic and video), and other audio-visual media, together with the written press and radio, could be considered to facilitate the teaching–learning processes.

The distinction between educating “for” or teaching “about” the media, on the one hand, and educating or teaching “with” the media, on the other, is still a useful dichotomy in the study of the curricular integration of new technologies in formal education, and in no way suggests that one can occur without the other. Photography, mass media, ICTs, or any other technology cannot be considered mere classroom learning tools that can be used without taking into account their social, ideological and economic implications. According to McLuhan (1964), every medium has its message, and that message must be analysed and critically investigated in media literacy education. Media literacy education is also inseparable from the use of the media themselves as resources. It would be absurd, for example, to address the importance of photography in social networks without taking into account how students use their mobile cameras.

With regard to the different approaches to media education throughout history, and therefore the introduction of photography and visual language, we would simply recall that early media studies were “counter-media”, a strategy that has been dubbed “the inoculation approach” (Gutiérrez, 1997; Kellner & Share, 2008). Later, in the middle of the twentieth century, media education shifted from a fundamentally protective approach against the supposed negative influence of the media, to a “discriminatory” approach, where education was assigned the task of distinguishing between “good” and “bad” products using aesthetic and ideological criteria. It was up to educators to help students distinguish between “Culture” with a capital “C” and so-called popular culture, of much lower rank. From a descriptive perspective, applied to photography as a denotative interpretation of the image, students analysed the form and content of media products without going into the ideology behind in the content, or the ideology of the authors. Technology is assumed to be transparent, its inherent message is not assessed, and media studies, as we have said, focus on a description and formal analysis of the products. The study of both media products and their uses and of the technologies and devices themselves involves analysing their characteristics from supposedly a aseptic perspective; the world of photography, television or the Internet is studied, for example, in the same way as the skeletal system of mammals.

In the study of photography, aesthetic approaches based on the consideration of media products as popular art adapted to the characteristics of new media have prevailed. According to De Abreu et al. (2017: 1), the artistic or aesthetic approach currently promotes media education and media literacy through creation and production, while placing special emphasis on enjoying the media. The greatest danger in this empowerment of individuals to value the aesthetic qualities of photography and to use the camera as a form of personal expression, lies in its tendency to focus too much on what products are like or how they are made, while overlooking the ideological, awareness-raising role of media companies and the role of photographic representations in the social construction of knowledge.

Using the iceberg metaphor that Ferguson (1998) developed to defend a critical approach to media education, we could say that analysing the media using aesthetic, descriptive and technological approaches, together with the denotative interpretation of photographs, focusses on what is visible, while what is truly important is hidden under the surface of the water: “the vast bulk beneath the water is the intellectual, historical, and analytical base”. Many educators are unaware of these rationales or principles, while others choose to ignore them in favour of an alleged and impossible ideological and political impartiality.

Audio-visual and media literacy has evolved in parallel with the appearance of new media and new communication resources. As Frau-Meigs (2017: 114) points out, “media literacy is shifting from the critical reception and analysis of mass media of the 1950s, to the reflective practices on media and social networks of the digital age”. The very concept and definitions of media education, digital literacy, information literacy, digital competence, audio-visual education, etc. have also been adapted to today’s world. UNESCO now recognises that “the empowerment of people through media and information literacy (MIL) is an important requirement for fostering equitable access to information and knowledge and promoting free independent and pluralistic media and information systems”; and defines MIL “as a composite of the competences (knowledge, skills and attitudes) necessary for life and work today. MIL considers all forms of media and other information providers such as libraries, archive, museums and Internet irrespective of technologies used” (https://goo.gl/1hNyZT).

In this chapter on teacher training, we cannot ignore what UNESCO goes on to say about MIL: “A particular focus will be on training teachers to sensitize them to the importance of MIL in the education process, enable them to integrate MIL into their teaching and provide them with appropriate pedagogical methods, curricula and resources”.

Photography and Education in the Digital Age

Just as Baudelaire in 1859 could never have imagined the role that photography would play as a means of expression in interpersonal communication and as a visual art in the twentieth century, a few decades ago it would have been hard for us to imagine that the mobile phone camera would be the most widely-used technology today, with functions as diverse as making simple annotations, recording data and events, announcing one’s presence in a particular place at a particular time, communicating and exchange information, and its role in personal expression and artistic creation.

The mobile phone is undoubtedly the most widely used technological device today, and proves more than anything else McLuhan's notion of media as an extension of man (McLuhan, 1964). For many users, the loss of their mobile would be nothing less than an “amputation”. The ubiquity of mobiles and Internet hyperconnectivity has led to a boom in instant messaging and visual communication, and with it, a renaissance in photography and still images.

Statistics let us see this boom in photographic images in numbers: The number of photos uploaded to networks went from 70 million a day in 2016 to 95 in 2017. In 2017, 46,200 images were published every minute, and 250 million users used Instagram stories every day (according to data from the “Statista” portal). It is easy to assume that these figures will already have multiplied by the time you read this book.

The history of humanity has been marked by milestones that have led to a significant change in the evolution of the world and of mankind, such as writing and the invention of the printing press. The development of digitization is perhaps the event that has had the most impactful and diverse influence on the cultural evolution of mankind. This technology has led to the creation of interconnected communication networks (Internet) and the habitual use of the photographic image to record, store and share information.

The importance of media such as photography, cinema or television in the twentieth century already compelled us to question the excessive bias of literacy towards verbal language. Early computers and networks contributed decisively to the dissemination of alphanumeric information, but technological developments at the turn of the century have also allowed still and moving images to circulate on networks and even surpass verbal language in some settings. The integration of languages means that most of the documents that we usually consume and produce today are multimedia. There are a growing number of mobile applications that make it easier to edit documents and add text to images, and a growing number of users communicate using multimedia documents. As a general rule applicable to the photographs produced by young people, we could say that, as Castañeda (2015: 29) shows in the case of memes, “visual aesthetics matters less than open communication, and that is a notion that must be taken into account when designing visual messages, because effectiveness has nothing to do with aesthetics”. Young people, despite the fact that their formal education has been almost exclusively focused on verbal literacy, today communicate with images, but without a basic knowledge of photography or audio-visual literacy.

This is paradoxical, and the fact that visual, audio-visual or multimodal language has not joined verbal language in the basic literacy of the twenty-first century student can only be explained by the inertia and rigidity of educational institutions. Audio-visual language has already permeated the lives of several generations, and we have learned to interpret the basic signs. Obviously, nowadays no one runs away when they see the image of a train advancing towards the camera. The degree of iconicity of visual as opposed to verbal representations means that we can all achieve a basic level of understanding without the need for instruction or teaching. This “natural” or spontaneous visual literacy, however, like the ability to understand and speak orally we acquire as children, does not cover the needs of today’s visual civilization.

Furthermore, the traditional, solely verbal literacy taught in compulsory schooling, though intentional and systematic, is also insufficient in today’s world. In this so-called era of convergence (Jenkins, 2006), many authors have called for a comprehensive, integrated model of basic training or multiple literacy that integrates languages and knowledge, and for the convergence of real and virtual learning environments (Tyner et al., 2015).

The ubiquity of cameras in mobile devices has led to the rise of photography on social networks, and the rise of image-based communication. This increase in the production and consumption of images is, for some, “a revolution as deep and essential as that of Gutenberg or, even the invention of writing, albeit using still or moving images”.

Every day—Millán Muñoz (2016) reminds us—we see as many photos or images as a person living a century ago saw in their entire life. This undoubtedly has educational repercussions, and we should ask ourselves—as does the aforementioned author (ibid.)—if all these thousands of images we consume are not changing the way we think, feel, act, want, speak, or feel moved. Millán goes on to ask: “And are they not changing the way we relate to other human beings? Or could they even, if the pace of technological change continues unabated, as appears to be the case, in some way change our brain, chemistry or cerebral neurology over the coming decades and centuries?”

Photography in Teacher Training

Logically, the ubiquity and widespread use of cameras will give photography centre stage in the pre-service and in-service training of teachers. This book describes the variety of different uses of photography in the teaching profession. We will see how photographic narrative can be used to reflect on and analyse teaching situations and practices, how photo-elicitation can recreate what happened in a situation beyond the immediate action, and bring to light the conflicts and ethical dilemmas found in the classroom (Bautista, 2017).

Photography is undoubtedly a useful tool in improving teaching skills, and is, as discussed above, a very versatile and easily accessible resource in teaching–learning processes. And if, added to this, we consider the importance of this medium in the daily lives of our students, we will see that it is essential to train teachers in photography, ICTs and media in general, and how all these can be used in education.

We have talked about photography and education in the digital age, and of image studies as an essential part of basic literacy for the twenty-first century. This basic literacy is not only needed at an early age, but is part of the in-service training of education professionals who, for the most part, have not received media education in either their compulsory education or in their professional training. As mentioned above, it is part of the audio-visual and media literacy of all teachers to be at least as familiar with photography and other media as any other person (level 1 of the graph).

Teaching teachers how to teach also involves studying photography as a resource. One of the greatest advantages of images as teaching–learning tools has always been the ability to present and represent realities that are not easily accessible to human perception. The use of photography and images as a teaching resource should go hand in hand with media literacy education that shows how images are not real, and how the representations they convey to us and that we convey with them can be biased. This is particularly necessary in today’s post-truth era, with fake news, deepfakes, virtual reality, augmented reality, etc.

The image as a teaching tool also acquires a new dimension in the digital age, where it is no longer merely used to facilitate understanding, but where both students and teachers can take photographs related to the learning content, present their work in a visual language, and habitually use photography as a means of expression. Creating images of curricular contents can at the same time be a part of media education and visual language learning. According to Rabadán (2015), teaching literacy through participatory photography should be understood as a way of “empowering communicationally”.

It makes no sense to conceive the curricular integration of photography as a tool without addressing the study of audio-visual language, just as it make no sense to study photography or video separately, but rather as part of a comprehensive approach to digital and media literacy. Nor does it make sense to design media education strategies for our classrooms that include photography and other technologies without taking into account the presence, importance, and features of cameras in the daily lives of students and educators.

Teachers must be aware of the new functions of photography that have arisen from the current ubiquity of cameras. As mentioned previously, photography is not only used to record something beautiful or remarkable—for artistic expression—but has replaced text in activities such as collecting ephemeral information or as a notebook. We see that now “take note” on bulletin boards has become “take a photo” Photography is also constantly used as a record of events, particularly “selfies”, and as a way of showing that we have been in a particular place. This evidence is shared instantly on social networks.

Some time ago, it was said that “if you’re not on the Internet you might as well not exist”, in terms of sales and presenting products to potential clients. This now appears to have become personal, especially in the case of young people. Attending a concert or any other event only acquires its full meaning when a photo of it is shared on the Internet. It is not enough to say it in a text message, it must be demonstrated with a photograph taken at that very moment.

Immediacy is, in my opinion, the main characteristic of photography in the digital age—immediacy in seeing the photo—a feature of digital cameras—and the possibility of sharing it immediately. This has become commonplace due to the integration of a camera in mobile devices that, in turn, operate as a small (or not so small) computer connected to the Internet.

Working with cameras in a mobile multimedia device increases the versatility and functions of photography in the daily lives of our students. Cameras can also be used as a record in academic settings, and the teacher should, therefore, know how to make the most of the educational potential of photography.

Visual search and image recognition applications, some of which are integrated into our Internet search engines, are now easy to find. It will be increasingly common to take a photograph of an object, a monument, a person, etc. and to immediately obtain access to written and visual information available on the Internet about what is represented in the photograph. The camera has also replaced the scanner and character recognition software. What's more, a photograph of a text in a certain language already gives you access to a translation in different languages; just like a picture of a maths problem can show you the solution on the Internet. All these functions of photography are part of the daily lives of today's students. Features such as facial recognition, already available in mobiles, can spark a classroom discussion on the potential of this ubiquitous technology to control our actions.

Immediacy and versatility, two characteristics of photography in the twenty-first century, should also ideally be present in the development of educational systems and the corresponding teacher training. Ideally, the changes brought about by the prevalence of visual language in today's communication practices will lead to immediate changes in educational policies and basic education programmes. However, if we can define versatility as the ability to adapt quickly and easily to different functions, it is clear that, unlike digital photography, neither basic education nor teacher training have been able to adapt to new forms of expression.

If classroom teaching continues to move further and further away from the way young people create meaning and communicate, if we limit ourselves to forbidding them from taking photos and bringing mobiles to class, what impression will they have of education? How can we raise awareness of these inconsistencies among teachers? These and other questions will be addressed in the following chapters of this book.