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managing the conflicts between students' vernacular knowledges and academic understandings of film.

ADM Subject Centre Learning and Teaching Project

Professor Martin Barker, Dr. Mikel Koven, Dr. Ernest Mathijs

Project Overview

The aim of this project was to examine, and measure the effects of an intervention in, the relationship between students' vernacular engagements with film, and their learning of academic approaches.  This is a perennial problem, not peculiar to film studies, but certainly very accentuated here.  By 'vernacular engagements' we meant the various ways in which, in their ordinary lives, people choose to watch and enjoy some films, perhaps engaging intensely with particular ones or kinds, and have no interest, or even positively avoid, others.  Their academic study of films requires them to watch a different range, for different reasons and with different questions.  And some of the approaches they learn can actually have a 'bruising' relationship with their ordinary involvements.  Because, for many students, cinema is a site of powerful engagement, what could potentially be an issue in any academic subject area is particularly close to the surface in film studies.  But also because films are, by our own account, bearers of social representations which are resonant with contested cultural meanings, it can hardly surprise us that there are potential conflicts between students’ wider senses of membership of their communities and their encounters with particular films.

The study was designed to have the following phases.  At the beginning of the year, our students watched the controversial film A Clockwork Orange and, before they had had any teaching on academic approaches to this, were asked to complete a web-based questionnaire (see Appendix 1 for this).  In mid-year, in a second interventionist phase, their analysed responses provided the basis for a lecture, through which their pre-academic responses became an object of academic attention.  Then, in seminars they had the opportunity to discuss these, and wider issues about 'vernacular engagements'.  In a final phase, at the end of the year, they were asked to complete a second questionnaire, which explored directly their developed understanding of the vernacular/academic relationship (see Appendix 2 for this).

All stages have been carried out here at Aberystwyth – with one small variation discussed in the footnote below. Of 290 students on the module, 226 completed the first questionnaire.  The analysis of these took a great deal of time – more than anticipated – and was presented to the students in a well-attended lecture in January 2003.  Seminars in the next two weeks gave opportunities to discuss issues arising from this.  Then, in early May, the second questionnaire was advertised to the group.  The response-rate was not as high this time – 150 completed the questionnaire – but still high enough to permit a substantial analysis.  At the time of writing this, all data and materials have been pulled from the database, but analysis of findings has been delayed by the sheer pressure of our examination period.

We have to report the complete failure of the one part of the project which was not under our direct control.  It was an important aspect of our bid to ADM Subject Centre that it should include a collaboration with three other Universities which also ran large first year Film modules.  The idea was that their students, who would only complete the opening and closing questionnaires and would not have the intervening teaching relating to vernacular/academic relationships, could provide points of comparison with ours.  We advertised our wish to collaborate via the MeCCSA mailbase, and several Universities contacted us, expressing interest and willingness.  We selected one other pre-92, and two post-92 Universities.  All that the collaboration required of them was that they advertise to their students the web address for our questionnaires, and encourage them to complete these.  Despite our best efforts, the outcomes have been desperately disappointing.  For the initial questionnaire we received less than 100 responses across the three institutions.  For the second questionnaire we received just 1 response in all.  This has made it impossible to use the intended methods of comparison.  Instead, we have tried to examine the materials generated from our own students in terms of the relationships between their first and later responses (although had we known we were going to be doing this, we would have framed the second questionnaire a little differently, in order to strengthen our ability to examine the relationships between the two).

Project Outcomes

As a result of this failure, our project outcomes cannot be as we had originally hoped.  We plan, still, to analyse our own students' responses in detail, but the mode of analysis must inevitably be rather different.  This analysis will be conducted over the summer, with a view to presenting a further report to you in the autumn.  However, we can report on some of the findings which emerged in the first phase of the research – which are significant in their own right.

Dissemination Plans

Two research reports are emerging from this project:

  • The first, and for LTSN most central, is a study of the problem of the relationship between vernacular and academic understandings of film.  This reports the main findings of this project as a whole, and includes a close analysis of the materials which the research garnered.  An almost final draft of this essay is attached to this report, and is offered in the first instance to ADM Subject Centre's Journal.  If not seen as appropriate there, it will be offered to another appropriate Journal, such as the Journal of Media Education, or another media-related Journal which is interested in issues of audiences.
  • The second is an analysis of students’ responses to Straw Dogs.  This is now also almost completed, and may be offered in the first instance to the on-line Journal Participations, which specialises in work on audiences.  The timing of our accidental adventure into this area could not have been better.  Shortly after our research questionnaire to our own students, the BBFC published a study conducted, under its auspices, by the Communications Research Group (‘Where Do You Draw The Line?’, 2002) which included substantial materials on audience responses to Straw Dogs.  This research used a quite different methodology to ours, which allowed some provocative contrasts.  The resultant essay can be sent as an attachment if it is of interest. 
  • Footnote: The one small variation concerned the first phase.  Originally, we had planned to screen them ACO twice – once, before they completed the first questionnaire, a second time as a trigger for introducing them to academic approaches to the film.  However, as we approached the date for the second screening we discovered that the film was to be shown on Channel 4 just three days earlier.  We therefore offered the group the choice between seeing ACO a second time with us, or instead watching a closely associated film, Straw Dogs, which came out the same year and was subject to the same intense criticism.  Straw Dogs had only just been released on DVD, after a long absence.  Overwhelmingly they chose to watch Straw Dogs.  But the response at the screening was quite extraordinary, with far more powerful emotional responses than with ACO.  We therefore quickly adapted the ACO questionnaire, to try to find out the dimensions of these reactions, but stressing that participation was entirely optional.  A much smaller number – 60 exactly – responded to this than had responded to the 'official' questionnaire, but analysis of these materials has proved rich and exciting.  We are in process of writing a major reconsideration of Straw Dogs in light of what emerged, which we are hopeful will be published in the new web-Journal Participations.  This essay will make clear the origins of this research in the ADM Subject Centre project.