Media Studies Within the System of Contemporary Culture Studies Education

This article describes the experience of teaching media within the humanistic educational framework as one of the pressing questions in high-school pedagogy. The article is based on the long personal experience of the author, who, starting with teaching cinema studies to students, gradually developed media culture and media education school within the culture studies framework. Empirical basis of the research is provided by the prolonged experience of the Chair of Cultural Studies and Leisure Studies of Ural Federal University. After analysing prospective trends in the development of contemporary Russian media education through the combined theory-and-practice approach, the author describes "media studies" as a priority field in humanistic higher education. Teaching media within bachelor's and master's programs in "Culture Studies" and "Socio-Cultural Work" allows us to solve several pedagogical tasks at once: 1) increase student's media competency; 2) foster the development of personal media culture; 3) teach students skill required to create their own media texts; 4) supports professional training of managers in sociocultural field (including audio-visual field). Our experience of introducing media studies in humanistic curriculum produce results which demonstrate that this educational approach not only fosters the development of an all-rounded personality but also provides competitive advantage for the prospective professionals.