News literacy and fake news curriculum: School librarians’ perceptions of pedagogical practices

Abstract

The high profile of fake news reveals underlying trends in the production and consumption of news. While news literacy is a lifelong skill, the logical time to start teaching such literacy is in K-12 educational settings, so that all people have the opportunity to learn and practice news literacy. School librarians can play a critical role in helping students gain news literacy competence. This study investigated the needs for K-12 students to be news literate and their current level of skills as perceived by in-service teachers and school librarians in California. Respondents thought that their students were most competent at distinguishing advertisements and least proficient at discerning the trustworthiness of photographs. Concurrently, news literacy was seldom integrated systematically into the curriculum. The findings supported the need for developing news media literacy curriculum, including visual and media literacy, that could be implemented by K-12 teachers and school librarians.