Abstract
Many journalism educators in Canada arrive in the academy with deep, varied, and direct journalism experience. This paper examines some potential impacts of our mainstream media experiences on the seemingly urgent need to reimagine journalism education. Drawing on industry and academic research, interaction with students and colleagues, and twenty-plus years working as a journalist, I invite colleagues to explore with me some of the ways our industry experiences may be hindering our work as journalism educators.My central argument is that working journalists tend not to reflect deeply on what they’re doing while they’re doing it. This lack of reflexivity can become entrenched and has potential to hinder our teaching and student learning.
In this paper, I share some of my experiences as both a journalist and a teacher. The reflections about my journalism practice are meant to provide some insights into what I now consider to be examples of flawed thinking in the areas of ethics and critical thinking. I will also explore some related experiences in my role as a journalism educator that showcase some of my previously unexamined assumptions about teaching and learning. The sharing of personal reflections is meant to inform my overall claim that if we are to advance an effective plan for journalism education by 2020, we must do a more careful job of probing our past practice and its impact on our work as journalism educators.
Bibliographic data
Haney, Sally, “Interrogating Our Past Practice as We Scale the Walls of the Box We Call Journalism Education,” Towards 2020: New Directions in Journalism Education
