Media Literacy from the Perspective of Teachers: What Students Really Need to Know and be Able to Do

Author(s):

Priscila Berger(presenting / submitting)Jens Wolling

Conference:

ECER 2017

Network:

03. Curriculum Innovation

Format:

Paper

Session Information

03 SES 03 A, Curriculum & 21st Century Skills

Paper Session

Time:

2017-08-22

17:15-18:45

Room:

K4.16

Chair:

Jan van den Akker

Contribution

In the National Leadership Conference on Media Literacy in 1992, a concept of media literacy was developed, which consists of four components of skills, namely access, analysis, evaluation and creation. Some scholars consider this concept fit all kind of media, including digital online media, thus, adopting a very similar understanding of media literacy (e.g. Livingstone, 2004; Buckingham et al, 2005; Hobs, 2010), while others took it as a starting point for further development, adding other aspects to the concept, for instance safety, copyright, and technical issues (e.g. Commission of the European Communities, 2007; Ferrari, 2012).

Based on these concepts, governments and institutions develop curricula to be implemented in schools, specifying what students should know and what skills they should have in order to reach an appropriate level of media literacy. The German state of Thuringia has released its media literacy guideline “Kurs Medienkunde” in 2009 to be implemented in the double classes 5/6, 7/8, and 9/10 in schools in the state. This document was developed based on the media literacy concept proposed in the position paper of the Länderkonferenz Medienbildug - LKM (2008), and is presented to schools as a guideline.

The Kurs Medienkunde is comprehensive in terms of subjects that schools are expected to develop with their students. The proposal covers the areas (1) Information and data, (2) Analyses, reasoning and evaluation, (3) Presentation, (4) Media and society, and (5) Law, data protection, and youth media protection. Each of these five areas includes specific sets of competences that should be developed in each double school year.

Moreover, the document Kurs Medienkunde highlights that each school is responsible for adjusting the concept to its reality, develop its own curriculum, and make sure the proposal is implemented (Thüringer Ministerium für Bildung, Wissenschaft und Kultur, 2009). Albeit each school administration defines the framework of implementation for the course, the duty of bringing the proposal to practice lies at the end on the teachers, who must find the time and resources to adequate their teaching plans, besides seeking the necessary knowledge and skills to be able to conduct their classes on media-related topics. Therefore, only when teachers support the media literacy proposal, and judge the conditions and their own skills as adequate, there are realistic chances of success in achieving the expected outcomes that the concept aims at.

For this reason, it is important to verify whether the teachers have the same understanding of the components of media literacy, its relevance, what knowledge and skills are important for students, what are the necessary conditions to develop it, and what are the roles of the school and the teacher in promoting it. Based on this, this study has the following research questions:

RQ₁: How does the understanding of teachers on what is media literacy differ from the guideline Kurs Medienkunde?

RQ₂: How can the variance in teachers’ perspectives be explained?

Many studies have already investigated teachers’ ICT acceptance, adoption and resistance (e.g. Hew & Brush, 2007, Petko, 2012, Avidov-Ungar and Magen-Nagar, 2014; Perrota, 2015). While the adoption of ICT in the learning environments is necessary to foster media literacy, it does not automatically generate it. In other words, technology adoption in class is a component of media literacy, but not equal it. Nevertheless, the aspects that helped explain teachers’ attitudes toward media technology in previous studies may contribute to build assumptions on what may influence teachers’ perspectives on media literacy.

Method

In order to evaluate the current media literacy concept of Thuringia “Kurs Medienkunde”, firstly, four interviews were conducted with schools’ directors and teachers responsible for media literacy, and with experts from three institutions that offer media training for teachers. The aim of the interviews was to understand better the reality of the schools, and get a closer idea about the context in which teachers must develop the media literacy proposal. Therefore, interviewees were inquired regarding their evaluation of the Kurs Medienkunde, available resources (e.g. technical, didactic material, training), and their experiences with the development and implementation of the proposal in schools. The interviews were recorded and transcribed, and are currently being analyzed via coding/categorization. The first findings in this phase show that schools put a strong emphasis on the development of skills related to use of digital devices and software. On the other hand, both schools and the institutions that offer training report little effort in promoting other aspects of media literacy, for instance, critical media consumption and understanding of media systems, despite recognizing them as relevant topics. The results of this qualitative phase will serve as reference for developing a questionnaire to be used as instrument of data collection in the following research phase. The second phase consists of a representative survey with teachers (n ≈ 1000) in the state of Thuringia, which will be distributed between April and June 2017. The questionnaire will be available both online and in paper version, in order to reach both teachers that have more affinity with technology, and the ones that have less, so that results can picture reality as closely as possible. The instrument will consist of different sets of questions, approaching for instance, teachers’ experience with the implementation of the Kurs Medienkunde, their perception on available resources and support of the institution, their personal background and media use habits, with special focus on their perceptions about media-related knowledge and skills that students need to develop during the school years. Based on these perceptions, a cluster analysis will be conducted in order to identify different groups of teachers concerning their understanding of necessary skills and knowledge that constitute media literacy. Finally, a comparison between these different groups will be made in terms of teachers’ personal and professional characteristics, as presented in the next part.

Expected Outcomes

We assume that some personal and professional characteristics of teachers may influence their views about media literacy. For instance, Berger (2016) found out that university instructors who were more familiar to media technology had more positive attitudes toward students’ media use during classes. Similarly, is expected that teachers that have a more active and varied media use behavior in terms of media products, channels and devices, recognize a greater set of skills and knowledge as relevant to media literacy. The study by Tiede and Grafe (2016) that compared pre-service teachers in Germany and the USA, found that German students had more positive attitudes both toward media use as a didactic tool, and toward promoting media education in schools, relating it as a consequence that German teaching study programs put a stronger emphasis on media education and school reform. Based on this, it is assumed that teachers that had media-related training in their university studies tend to recognize a greater set of skills and knowledge as relevant to media literacy. Moreover, it is assumed that this effect will also be found on teachers that had off-the-job training in media-related topics. In addition to this, time experience in teaching is expected to have an effect on teachers’ understanding of media literacy. More experienced teachers might be more resistant in implementing new methods and contents in their classes, while younger teachers might also find it challenging to cover both the topics that are directly related to their main subject. Thus, it is assumed that both groups, teachers who are at the beginning of their career and the ones who are close to retirement, recognize a more limited set of skills and knowledge as relevant to media literacy.

References

Avidov-Ungar, O., & Magen-Nagar, N. (2014). Teachers in a changing world: attitudes toward organizational change. Journal of Computers in Education, 1(4), 227–249. Berger, P. (2016). Students’ media use and multitasking behavior in class: Perspectives of university instructors about its impacts on the educational environment. Ilmenau: Universitätsbibliothek. Retrieved from http://uri.gbv.de/document/gvk:ppn:846894521 Buckingham, D., Banaji, S., Carr, D., Cranmer, S., & Willett, R. (2005). The media literacy of children and young people: A review of the research literature. Comission of the European Communities. (2007). A European approach to media literacy in the digital environment. (Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions No. 833). Brussels: European Union. Retrieved from http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=COM%3A2007%3A0833%3AFIN%3AEN%3APDF Ferrari, A. (2013). DIGCOMP: A Framework for Developing and Understanding Digital Competence in Europe. (JRC Scientific and Policy Reports No. EUR 26035). Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union. Hew, K. F., & Brush, T. (2007). Integrating technology into K-12 teaching and learning: Current knowledge gaps and recommendations for future research. Educational Technology Research and Development, 55(3), 223–252. Hobbs, R. (2010). Digital and Media Literacy: A Plan of Action (White Paper). USA: The Aspen Institute. Retrieved from http://mediaeducationlab.com/digital-and-media-literacy-plan-action Länderkonferenz MedienBildung. (2008). Kompetenzorientiertes Konzept für die schulische Medienbildung (Position paper). LKM. Retrieved from http://www.laenderkonferenz-medienbildung.de/index.php/medienbildung.html Livingstone, S. (2004). Media Literacy and the Challenge of New Information and Communication Technologies. The Communication Review, 7(1), 3–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/10714420490280152 Perrotta, C. (2015). Beyond rational choice: How teacher engagement with technology is mediated by culture and emotions. Education and Information Technologies, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-015-9457-6 Petko, D. (2012). Teachers’ pedagogical beliefs and their use of digital media in classrooms: Sharpening the focus of the “will, skill, tool” model and integrating teachers’ constructivist orientations. Computers & Education, 58(4), 1351–1359. Tiede, J., & Grafe, S. (2016). Media Pedagogy in German and U.S. Teacher Education. Comunicar, 49(XXIV), 19–28. Thüringer Ministerium für Bildung, Wissenschaft und Kultur. (2009). Durchführung des Kurses Medienkunde an den Thüringer allgemein bildenden weiterführenden und berufsbildenden Schulen.

Author Information

Priscila Berger (presenting / submitting)

Technische Universität Ilmenau

Empirische Medienforschung und politische Kommunikation

Ilmenau

Jens Wolling