Extras: THE ROLES OF MOVIES IN EDUCATION: ENHANCING LEARNING AND ENGAGEMENT

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by Aveline MacQuoid on September 8, 2024

in Extras

The different ways through which movies are used in education to enhance learning and engagement among the students despite the various complexities associated with teaching and learning.

The powerful media of storytelling, entertainment, and artistic expression have long been hallmarks that draw millions of audiences. Movies have shown their effectiveness at presenting complex stories together with intricate emotions. While most people relate movies only to recreation and culture, their role in education has consistently been underplayed. This is now changing, as educators and educational institutions appreciate the value of movies as a medium for enhancing the learning experience. But even more, than entertaining, some films communicate details that are especially poignant for students, making abstract concepts seem more understandable and lucid to them and promoting a level of intellectual exploration that might not have been present with exposure to only a dry text. Films run the gamut from historical dramas that immerse the viewer into past events to scientific documentaries that visually explain complex phenomena, connecting theoretical understandings to practical applications. When used in an educational setting, movies do much more than shift the monotony of regular procedure in a traditional teaching setup; they draw interest and appeal to various learning styles, including the visual, auditory, and kinaesthetic learner. This can be contrasted with how textbooks or lectures sound dead and way off base, making it hard to relate to them fully. If you, as a student, have difficulty in writing your essay because of unavoidable reasons, such as traveling, you can seek assistance from Peachy Essay. Movies place the student closer to experience, catching interest and emotion toward full intellectual engagement. Whether used as a primary teaching tool or supplementary teaching aid to support the topic under discussion, movies make discourses in class more engaging, provide a broader understanding, and encourage critical thinking more dynamically and interactively. As part and parcel of their teaching strategy, educators are using them to become more versatile in teaching and use an even more inclusive way of learning.

Visual Learning and Comprehension

Visual representation of information is one of how movies are essential in education. For most students, especially those with a visual learning style, it is often faster and easier to understand and memorize things through representation, pictures, colours, and movement. For example, history lessons can come alive through historical dramas or documentaries, allowing students to see events unfold and understand the context more deeply than through traditional textbooks alone. Movies also help simplify complex concepts. In subjects like science, abstract theories can be difficult to grasp through written text. Hence, educational films or animated full-length feature films notch down processes, for example, in cell division or maybe on climate change. What’s more, films play the latter fact in life, then give reasons why theory is needed. This is more helpful in releasing the applicability of some knowledge in theoretical physics, mathematics, and engineering.

Emotional and Empathetic Engagement

Letting an audience feel for a character in a movie and the emotional power associated with a film proves that movies can offer couples an insight into social and ethical issues. It should be remembered that films featuring other cultures, past struggles, or moral problems make students stop for a moment and think about something other than their direct experience. Therefore, affective engagement is necessary to draw out empathy, emotional intelligence, and feeling connected with what is being studied. For instance, Schindler’s List or 12 Years an enslaved person will give a student almost an embodied sense of historical atrocities that a textbook can describe in words dispassionately. These movies help students reflect on human rights, ethics, and justice, allowing them to discuss substantive issues that might allow them to grapple with them critically.

Enhanced Critical Thinking and Analysis

Moreover, films may help to develop students’ critical thought in such a way that they can scrutinize the theme, narrative, and character development within movies. Discourse on the story, the symbolism, or the message of the film empowers the students to develop their analytical intelligence, interrelate one notion with another, and make a critical assessment on the variety of viewpoints over the matter. The lessons on a film are usually very effective to be held during literature classes since, in this case, it would be possible to compare the written text to its screen version. According to this comparison, it would be possible to voice how different media render themes, how a story is interpreted by its director, and how various artistic methods lead the audience. It provokes in the students the approach of questioning the content and the filmmaker’s approach while compelling them to critique and analyse the information or details.

Increased Engagement and Motivation

Movies raise motivation and engagement within the classroom and are easily accessible to most students. Embedding movies into lessons also makes learning fun, eroding the boredom representative of most traditional teaching methods. And this is true, especially for students for whom the standard learning format doesn’t work, whether it is a lecture or textbook-reading approach. Stimulating films can become the impetus for studying things in more detail, fostering an interest and a thirst for knowledge. For example, one can screen a good movie, The Social Network, to set the terms for a discussion on entrepreneurship or, more pointedly, on the ethical questions raised by technology. It brings academic content alive: A teacher presents a subject as an exciting plot that captures students’ attention and creates a sense of importance and interest.

Bridging Theory and Real-World Application

Most documentaries and biographical movies show how applied theoretical knowledge to life can be fundamental in science, technology, and social studies. Students get to witness ideas applied to real life, be it a biopic on a scientist, a documentary on social movements, or a film full of technological exploration. Films like The Imitation Game or Hidden Figures will allow everyone to learn about historical events, obstacles, and successes that people have experienced while trying to apply their knowledge and gifts to real-life problems. Such films, therefore, allow the children to appreciate that education is extended well beyond the classroom, showing just how relevant it is in the larger world as it inspires one perhaps to account for what they might one day add to it.

In conclusion, films are a compelling and multidimensional highway for enriching learning at school by fusing visual narration with academia to make learning more accessible, interactive, and impactful. They reduce those abstract ideas that may be difficult to understand otherwise, creating at the same time emotional connections that build empathy and deeper insight into complex social, cultural, and ethical issues. This enables the student to gain insight into different worldly outlooks, see the practical implications of conceptual knowledge, and develop critical thinking by analysing the use of narratives, symbolism, and themes. Movies also tend to have a multiplier effect because they interact with a medium that is more pleasing and relevant to the students than other teaching methods. Education is an empirically and gradually modified process by technology, but this integration with film throughout the curriculum will enrich it further. Further preparation means an insight into better ways of negotiating an ever-increasingly complex and integrated world.

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