Field-Based Teacher Education in Elementary Media Literacy as a Means to Promote Global Understanding

Abstract

Preservice teachers develop valuable knowledge and skills when they get opportunities to collaborate with classroom teachers in a field experience program designed to implement and assess a variety of instructional practices in media literacy education. This article describes a university–school partnership that supports the professional development of preservice teachers and elementary teachers. To promote global understanding while developing critical thinking skills about mass media and popular culture, this program used a range of specific instructional practices to help combat negative media stereotypes and increase knowledge, tolerance, and acceptance of the peoples and cultures of the Middle East. Grade 3 and 4 children learned to identify inaccurate visual stereotypes of the Middle East and strengthened message analysis skills through asking critical questions about the representation of Arab people in popular culture, including advertising and animation. They gained knowledge about the many nations and cultures of the Middle East through the use of library resources and online databases. After creating simple videos to represent their own cultural heritage to others, they participated in an online collaborative forum sharing their work and responding to questions through a collaborative wiki with students from Kuwait, who shared their culture and family traditions. Students and teachers decreased their reliance on cultural stereotypes and increased their knowledge and appreciation of the peoples and cultures of the Middle East.