Instructional practices in media literacy education and their impact on students’ learning

Abstract

This study reports the findings of qualitative and quantitative research designed to assess the impact of different types of instructional practices involving media literacy education across the curriculum. Teachers in a small school district participated in a staff development program in media literacy and developed unique approaches for integrating media literacy concepts into language arts, history, math and science at the ninth grade level. The work of four different teams of ninth grade teachers is described by examining the instructional practices, motivations and philosophy behind teachers’ application of media literacy concepts into the curriculum. In addition, students exposed to these different forms of media literacy education were tested on specific media analysis skills, including the ability to identify main ideas, the message's purpose, point of view, and various structural features of a news broadcast. Students who received a balance of media analysis and media production experiences, who used film and video frequently in the classroom and who did not rely exclusively on off‐the‐shelf prepared media literacy curriculum performed better in measures of media analysis which involved the deconstruction of a segment of television news programming. Results also showed that classrooms which engaged in more extensive and comprehensive approaches to integrating media literacy skills into existing curriculum had students with higher levels of information processing skills including recall and comprehension of ideas presented in a video.