Teacher Collective Agency, Disciplinary Literacies, and the Praxis of Critical Media Literacy in Teacher/Education

• In Event: Critical Media Literacy to Imagine, Empower, and Transform Educational Research and Practice

Abstract

1. Objectives or purposes

The first presentation offers ways to mesh Critical Media Literacy with the disciplinary literacies taught in secondary-level teacher education spaces. Through teacher collective praxis, the practice of doing science or history can welcome critical analysis and production of discourses related to knowledge production in biology, historical narratives, or other disciplinary practices. The central objective is to make connections between the theoretical foundations of Critical Media Literacy and possibilities for contemporary teaching practices. Examples of praxis include teacher curricular designs around drought mitigation during the climate crisis, teaching decolonization in secondary-level Indigenous Studies, and exploring issues of power in artistic expression.

2. Perspective(s) or theoretical framework

This work is situated within Critical Media Literacy (Author 3, 2019; Author 1, 2017; Author 3, 2005) and the ethical questions at the core regarding how educators engage with others in digital ecologies (Janks, 2018; Luke et al., 2018; Luke, 2013). Teacher collective and ecological agency (Biesta et al. 2015) conceptually frame how teachers can support each other in navigating complex policies and structures to enact Critical Media Literacy practices in their curricular design and classroom praxis.

3. Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry

Content analysis (Hoffman et al., 2011; Krippendorff, 2004) was employed to analyze the data. Both textual and multimedia sources were analyzed to generate themes relating to teacher understandings and patterns across school contexts that illuminate possibilities for growing the work of Critical Media Literacy throughout educational systems.

4. Data sources, evidence, objects, or materials

Data include projects created to invite Critical Media Literacy into K-12 spaces within specific disciplines and grade levels. These projects were created by 50 in-service teachers who are also graduate students at a large public university. Artifacts include original lesson plans, adaptations of existing unit plans, multimedia project exemplars, and reflections on the collaborative processes that supported the creation of these projects.

5. Results and/or substantiated conclusions or warrants for arguments/point of view

Results demonstrate the efficacy of collective teacher agency in shaping, adapting, and refining curricula to make them responsive to student identities, lived realities, and concerns about digital ecologies amidst media spectacle and bids for young people’s attention. Across cases, findings indicated teachers’ capabilities to engage theory and apply critical media literacy in cycles of praxis, constructing responsive curricula on a range of issues.

6. Scientific or scholarly significance of the study or work

Central to the goal of unforgetting histories is the practice of engaging ideologies present in texts. This practice can unveil the ways historical events are obscured or invoked in attempts to legitimize current social arrangements. This presentation highlights the conditions needed to bring this practice to K-12 learning, which can be reimagined as public spaces in which people collaborate in the service of the public good. Supporting conditions for teacher collective agency and Critical Media Literacy not only fosters ideology critique but also builds the capacity of schoolchildren in critically producing media texts. Re-imagining our understandings of the past shapes our present and reinforces the construction of radical imaginaries we might work towards in our shared future.

Author

• Noah Asher Golden, California State University - Long Beach