Movies in classroom: didactic resource, pedagogical approach or enjoyment?

Abstract

Cinema is highly applied in classrooms and in circumstances that involve teaching and learning. Teachers from different degrees of training resort to the showing of fiction and non-fiction movies, as much to demonstrate curriculum contents as to reinforce the knowledge. However, little is known about the use of films by teachers, since there is not a specific pedagogy for this resource, neither there are rules to help guiding the use of this technology. Over the first years of scholar education, movies can even be recreational, but in a stage of higher education, more oriented to a wide and professional formation of individuals, in which way do videos and movies work as pedagogic helpers? Pursuing this aspect, this survey pointed out 55 professors of eleven courses of a high school institution, tackling subjects such as the routine of the using of movies in classroom, the nature of this pedagogic resource and the capacity of teachers on the use of it. Results gathered on forms allow us to reflect over the relation between movies, technology and education.