Film as the Engine for Learning

Film has been used for education ever since educators recognized its powerful potential for learning. But its educational application has been criticized throughout the decades for underuse of the distinctive potential of film: to raise interest. To understand more fully film’s potential for learning, we propose a dynamic model of viewer interest and its underlying cognitive and emotional mechanisms (film’s interest raising mechanisms or FIRM model). In addition, we present an analysis method for assessing the interestingness of films in learning contexts. Our model marries interest theories from cognitive film theory and educational psychology and captures the dynamics of interestingness across a film as depending on a balance between challenge posed and coping potential provided.