Media Literacy Education Program Evaluators: What’s the Job Description, Again?

Abstract

School program evaluation researchers confront overlapping questions concerning our roles in the field. In the quest for “good” data and “The Truth,” am I a shrewd researcher before all else? In the interest of establishing respectful, reciprocal relationships with my school partners, am I first a gracious school guest, prepared to sacrifice research integrity for the sake of goodwill? Or, for the sake of students, am I foremost an advocate for the intervention, pressing an agenda I firmly believe in? As an ingénue who recently turned toward the field of media literacy education (MLE), which had long attracted me but did not square with my “Associate Professor of Psychology” title or graduate training, I grapple with these questions.