Globalisation has led to increased importance being placed on literacy, in order to facilitate communication in a world-wide information economy, and on scientific knowledge, which has been the basis for modern technological advance. The implications of this for education are that scientific literacy and science in the media together with critical literacy are important topics for the classroom. There is also a demand for cross-curricularity and for subject boundaries to dissolve to produce synergies between subjects through collaboration. Critical literacy and scientific literacy are deemed to be desirable outcomes of education in an information-rich and media-dominated society. There is a growing recognition of the need for formal science education to have a more embedded approach to science in the media and to be proactive in preparing young people to engage with the science they meet beyond the classroom. Concurrent with this are the ongoing efforts to raise literacy standards. At school level, critical literacy aims to encourage young people to question texts and to recognize that words can be loaded and that language conveys a range of meanings. These concerns transcend national borders and have a wide relevance in a global context. Furthermore compartmentalisation of subjects is perceived to be undesirable and greater integration across disciplines is now encouraged. There is a consequent emphasis on cross-curricular links and on interdisciplinary cooperation. This research study recognises the need for trainee teachers to be prepared to address these challenges. It explores how well they are prepared to do so and how their knowledge and skills could be enhanced. The questions which this research addressed were as follows: • To what extent does the subject specialism dictate the nature of a trainee teacher’s critical engagement with science in the media? • To what extent can collaborative interdisciplinary working enhance trainee teachers’ critical response to science in the media? The objective was to determine the readiness of trainee teachers of English and Science to handle both science in the media and critical literacy in the classroom and then to investigate whether by working together across the subject boundary their proficiency in this area would be enhanced.

This case study involved two cohorts of 140 trainee teachers of science and English. All participants were graduate students undertaking a course in preparation for secondary teaching. The first cohort, who were untutored with respect to science in the media, completed a critical reading task based on two science based news articles from the national press. A second cohort completed a similar task but in addition they received tuition aimed at highlighting key concepts of critical reading applied to science-based news. Subsequently, these students worked in either single subject or interdisciplinary groups to produce a media based resource intended to stimulate pupils’ criticality. Data collection involved: • Analysis of critical reading tasks, completed independently by trainee teachers, centered on science-based news reports. • Documentary analysis of trainee-authored resources, produced in interdisciplinary and single discipline working groups, to promote critical reading among pupils. • Individual questionnaires conduced with trainee teachers.

The findings suggest that trainee teachers’ capability to make a comprehensive critical response to science-based news articles is limited. The lack of commonality between the subject groups and incompleteness of responses may highlight: • The lack of an underlying structure on which to build a systematic critical response. • The distinctive and limiting approaches to critical literacy which subject qualifications currently engender. Analysis of the cross curricular teaching intervention would suggest that: • The student experience was a positive and constructive one. • Resource materials authored by interdisciplinary groups demonstrated increased levels of sophistication and discernment with respect to critical literacy than those from single subject groups. • There is potential value of collaborative, interdisciplinary approaches to the promotion of critical literacy across the curriculum. • Effective promotion of critical literacy across the curriculum will depend on the identification of training needs in initial teacher training and continued professional development