Curriculum-Informed Statement of Intention
As a pre-service teacher preparing to teach Year 12 Media (VCE Units 3 and 4) in Victoria, my overarching aim is to facilitate a dynamic and inclusive learning environment where students develop both theoretical and practical media literacy. This teaching and learning portfolio integrates pedagogical strategies, curriculum alignment, reflective professional planning, and digital tools to engage senior secondary students in deep learning and creative production.
My decision to centre this portfolio on the VCE Media Study Design (2025) reflects my intention to meet both student learning needs and VCAA assessment requirements. In Units 3 and 4, students are expected to engage with media narratives, media production design, and critical understandings of agency and control in and of the media. The core skills include analysing the construction of meaning through story and production elements, designing media products with intention and awareness, and evaluating the social and political contexts of media forms and their impact on audiences.
This portfolio demonstrates how each of the five assessment components—Curriculum-Informed Statement of Intention, Professional Learning Audit and Plan, Annotated Unit Planner, Annotated Resources, and Digital Website Presentation—cohere to form a comprehensive and purposeful learning and teaching sequence. Each component is deliberately designed to align with VCE Media curriculum expectations, support student engagement, and foster critical, creative, and reflective learning.
The Professional Learning Audit and Plan identifies my current capabilities and areas for growth, specifically in assessment literacy, inclusive teaching, and digital production tools. These reflections directly inform the curriculum decisions embedded in my planner and resource curation. My annotated planner outlines the intended teaching sequence, showing how learning outcomes are structured logically and progressively, from understanding media narratives to producing and evaluating their own media products. Resources, case studies, and scaffolds are provided to support this learning, all curated and annotated to ensure pedagogical relevance and accessibility.
I have composed this statement in the first person to assert my professional voice as an emerging senior secondary Media educator. The decision to construct this portfolio digitally is both a reflection of Media’s multimodal nature and a professional commitment to ICT-enabled pedagogies. I propose to use this website not only as a repository of lessons and resources but as a platform for showcasing student learning, fostering collaboration, and providing transparency for key stakeholders.
Each element of the assignment serves a dual function—providing direction to students and enabling me as an educator to articulate and reflect on my intentions and practices. For example, the digital sequence enables students to access asynchronous content and task support, while simultaneously enabling ongoing adaptation of resources and exemplars based on learner needs and feedback.
Pedagogically, I draw on constructivist and socio-cultural learning theories (Buckingham, 2003; Burn & Durran, 2007), positioning students as active participants in constructing meaning and making media. I also align my practice with the High Impact Teaching Strategies (HITS), using Explicit Teaching (HITS #3) to model analysis and production, Feedback (HITS #8) to scaffold learning, and Differentiated Instruction (HITS #5) to respond to varied learning needs. Bloom’s Taxonomy further underpins my task design, supporting progression from lower- to higher-order thinking across analytical, reflective, and creative tasks.
I have applied this pedagogical approach in the design of the learning sequence. For example, the planner begins with the deconstruction of media texts, focusing on how story and production elements construct meaning. These tasks lay the foundation for student-led production design, where they conceptualise and plan their own media product through the Media Production Design Plan (MPDP). Students also critically analyse representations in media, aligning with Outcome 2. Each week features opportunities for self and peer reflection, supported by templates, sentence stems, and glossary-aligned vocabulary tasks to build language fluency and examination readiness.
The integration of formative assessment and student feedback cycles ensures that students develop metacognitive skills and understand the iterative nature of media production. In particular, journal reflections, peer critique protocols, and SAC preparation exercises allow learners to track their growth and refine their thinking. These align with examiner feedback, which highlights the need for students to articulate their intentions and evaluate production decisions in relation to audience, purpose, and context.
The structure of my planner and associated resources is deliberate and responsive. Each learning intention is mapped to the VCAA Media Study Design’s key knowledge and key skills. Activities are designed to span 2 x 70-minute and 1 x 35-minute sessions weekly, allowing for explicit instruction, workshop time, and reflective consolidation. This structure also supports time-bound SAC preparation and submission of the MPDP. Colour-coded icons and legends help teacher-users easily navigate tasks, assessment points, and resource links.
The annotated resources embedded in the planner are curated to support both teacher facilitation and student learning. For example, the inclusion of First Nations media producers, feminist film criticism, and international cinema texts encourages intercultural awareness and critical engagement. These resources are linked to the cross-curriculum priorities outlined in the Mparntwe Education Declaration (2019) and support Outcome 2’s focus on representations, ideology, and agency.
Furthermore, my digital presentation of the portfolio demonstrates my capacity to use ICT for pedagogical purposes. Inspired by Walsh (2007), the website includes interactive visual content, downloadable scaffolds, and opportunities for learners to reflect and submit via embedded forms. It also allows for seamless integration of links to the VCAA website, study design exemplars, ATOM resources, and creative production platforms like Adobe Express and Canva.
As I refine my identity as a senior secondary educator, this process of designing an integrated portfolio has sharpened my understanding of curriculum, assessment, and pedagogy. It has also enabled me to articulate how theory and practice intersect in meaningful ways. Ultimately, my intention is to support students to become not only skilled media producers but also thoughtful and ethical media consumers.