Critical Pedagogy

This chapter provides a theoretical framework of critical media literacy (CML) pedagogy and examples of practical implementation in K-12 and teacher education. It begins with a brief discussion of literature indicating the need for educators to use a critical approach to media. The historical trajectory of CML and key concepts are then reviewed. Following this, the myths of “neutrality” and “normalcy” in education and media are challenged. The chapter takes a critical look at information and communication technologies and popular culture, reviewing how they often reinforce and occasionally challenge dominant ideologies. Next, this critical perspective is used to explore how CML interrogates the ways media tend to position viewers, users, and audiences to read and negotiate meanings about race, class, gender, and the multiple identity markers that privilege dominant groups. The subjective and ubiquitous nature of media is highlighted to underscore the transformative potential of CML to use media tools for promoting critical thinking and social justice in the classroom.

Literacy Information and Computer Education Journal, 2016

Critical media literacy is important because media's ubiquitous presence has become the digital wallpaper of life, and students need to learn how to use media responsibly for learning, communicating, and participating in democratic societies. Media literacy skills have been defined historically in uncritical ways: awareness of the dangers of (over) exposure to media; the study of media as an art form; or learning about the technical elements of media such as audience. The focus of this paper is on deeper, more complex conceptions of media literacy within its complicated social and educational contexts. The authors argue that critical media literacy can provide rich learning for students. Critical media literacy builds skills of analysis and critique in the deconstruction and interpretation phase where students learn to recognize hegemonic aspects of media. Deconstruction is only one side of the critical equation, however. During the media production phase, critical media literacy can give voice to students and empower them to take action to make changes in society. In the process, critical media literacy can lead students to deeper understandings of literacies and discourses in society than previously considered possible. This paper theorizes critical media literacy in both of these phases: its deconstructive, critical phase and its transformative and critical production phase. An analysis is provided also of some of the challenges associated with critical media literacy as a transformative pedagogy.

LEARNing Landscapes, Vol 6, No. 2, Spring 2013 (109-124)., 2013

his article provides a framework and examples for critical media literacy pedagogy. More than simply guiding how students read and interpret the texts they encounter, critical media literacy pedagogy pushes to illuminate the underlying power struc- tures that are a part of every media text. Throughout this article, examples from working with high school youth and preservice teachers are provided. In recogniz- ing recent shifts in media production as a result of participatory culture, this article focuses on how youth-created media products are an integral part of a 21st century critical media literacy pedagogy.

Media Theory, 2019

From chalkboard sites to social media, from smartphones to interactive grading software, there is an overabundance of digital learning tools at our fingertips, many of which float into our classrooms on airy praise from university administrators, politicians, and corporate technicians alike who tout the incorporation of these technologies into our teaching as an undeniably positive step toward the “enhancement” of student learning. Rather than promoting a critical model of learning by which students and teachers can explore the matrix of possibilities “afforded” by their relationship to new media, the techno- fetishist instrumentality of “technology-enhanced learning” functions as an efficient means of materializing neoliberal market ideology and adjusting us to accepting our positions as self-contained users of discrete tools that define for us what the goals and processes of learning will be. It is imperative, then, that we engage ourselves and our students in the critical pedagogical process of learning to learn in conversation with – not at the behest of – media. To do so gets to the very heart of critical pedagogy itself, because, as I argue, the ontological assumptions underwriting the very hope and possibility of critical pedagogy as a political project are nothing if not the essential coordinates for a media theory of being. If we are to determine how to develop a sufficiently critical pedagogy in the age of digital media, we must first re-locate the learning process in the exploration of the open, dialectical circuits between human and world through which life itself is mediated, and from which political change is made possible.

Journal of curriculum Studies, 1996

The International Journal of Critical Media Literacy , 2019

In the current sociopolitical climate, children, often, bear witness to the levels of vitriol in this country. It has become more imperative that elementary classroom teachers disrupt normative discourses. Therefore, the author suggests critical media literacy as a significant pedagogical practice to utilize in order to do so. In this article, the author articulates the importance of employing critical media literacy in the elementary classroom to deconstruct the diversity of tense relations in the u.s. and provide a language for students to articulate their identities and experiences. Through her experiences in elementary classrooms, as a teacher and a teacher-educator, the author provides practical examples of how to disrupt normative discourses by utilizing critical media literacy.

Social justice education is the most explicitly activism-oriented discipline in higher education. However, critical media literacy is noticeably absent from the curricula at the leading universities offering graduate degrees in social justice in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. This is a perplexing omission, given the corporate media's leading and comprehensive role in sustaining an oppressive status quo, spreading ruling-class ideologies, and maintaining the inherently unjust hegemony of capitalist economic and political elites. This chapter explains why the inclusion of critical media literacy is indispensable to social justice education. It provides educators with multifold ways to incorporate critical media literacy into their courses and curriculum to empower students to advance social justice causes and struggle more effectively for an equitable world.

This chapter explores the theoretical underpinnings of critical media literacy and analyzes four different approaches to teaching it. Combining cultural studies with critical pedagogy, Douglas Kellner and Jeff Share argue that critical media literacy aims to expand the notion of literacy to include different forms of media culture, information and communication technologies and new media, as well as deepen the potential of literacy education to critically analyze relationships between media and audiences, information and power. A multiperspectival approach addressing issues of gender, race, class and power is used to explore the interconnections of media literacy, cultural studies and critical pedagogy. In the interest of a vibrant participatory democracy, educators need to move the discourse beyond the stage of debating whether or not critical media literacy should be taught, and instead focus energy and resources on exploring the best ways for implementing it.

1995

ED380762 - Teaching Critical Literacy across the Curriculum in Multimedia America.