At the WJEC in Paris we got the opportunity to present the outcomes of a research project of the European Journalism Training Association (EJTA) called: “Journalistic Roles, Values and Qualifications in the 21st Century; How European journalism educators view the future of a profession in transition”.
As you know, there is a growing body of international research on the culture of journalism, on its roles and values. This research is often focused on Professional journalists (e.g. “Worlds of Journalism Study”) and sometimes on Journalism students (e.g. “Journalism Students around Globe”), but hardly or not on Journalism teachers.
Within our association (EJTA) we believe that journalism education can and should play a bigger role in the development of the profession than it has done in the past. This motivated us to start a research on the views of Journalism teachers on the actual and desired changes in journalism culture.
At the conference in Paris, we found that there was a lot of interest in our work from all over the world. People wondered if the European research could be replicated elsewhere, on other continents. We would welcome that. Wouldn’t it be great if we could make cross-continental comparisons and present them at WJEC6 in Beijing 2022?
What EJTA can offer is the methodology/questionnaire and advise on how to handle things. You can find our report on https://www.ejta.eu/publications. The questionnaire can be found in appendix 1 of the report (pp. 126-133). We can also play a (if so desired: leading) role in putting the various datasets together in a year or two.
What we cannot offer is research staff or budget. So if your organisation agrees that it would be interesting to replicate the European survey, you would have to find someone to carry out the research. If your association does not have the means to employ a researcher, which most likely is the case, one of the member institutes of your association should volunteer to do the research. I guess that there will be at least one member that finds it an honour and/or can include it in a running research programme.
Furthermore, you would need a representative sample of respondents, that is: teachers who work at an institute for journalism education (regardless of their job size or the subject they are teaching). And of course you would need a survey tool (Survey Monkey Gold, CheckMarket or something alike) that can process the data and put them directly into a SPSS-file.
There is not a strict timeline yet, as we are still in the beginning of the process. The deadline is December 2021, so there will be time left to make global comparisons before the next World Journalism Education Congress in Beijing.
If you are interested, please let me know at n.drok@windesheim.nl
Yours truly,
Dr. Nico Drok
President EJTA
