“We Teach Anyway”: Community-Responsive K-12 Critical Media Literacy Education

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

Abstract

1. Objectives

This qualitative, participatory study examines how K-12 teachers designed and implemented critical media literacy curricula through professional learning communities. Guided by critical media literacy (Author 3, 2019), disciplinary literacy (Spires et al., 2019), and historically responsive literacy frameworks (Muhammad, 2023), teachers reimagined curriculum as acts of unforgetting and futuring. This work responds to California’s media and climate literacy policies (CA A.B. No. 285/873, 2023) and centers communities where educators across English, Ethnic Studies, and science co-designed responsive curricula. Rooted in local histories and global struggles, this presentation foregrounds teacher agency and community-responsive approaches preparing students to decode power, author countermedia, and enact more just futures.

2. Theoretical Perspectives

This study draws on the Critical Media Literacy Framework (Author 3, 2019), which positions media as a site for critique and transformative action, bridging cultural studies with critical pedagogy. It aligns with Critical Global Disciplinary Literacy (Spires et al., 2019) and historically responsive literacy (Muhammad, 2023). These frameworks embed inquiries about power, identity, and representation across disciplines, honoring students’ cultural knowledge through teachers’ curricular decisions. Ecomedia literacy (López, 2021) extends this into climate and place-based inquiry, while teacher collective agency (Biesta et al., 2015) elevates educators as co-constructors of knowledge.

3. Methods

Critical qualitative and participatory design-based methods guided this study (Bang & Vossoughi, 2016; Esposito & Evans-Winters, 2022), re-positioning teachers as co-researchers. Through justice-oriented professional development, educators engaged in iterative lesson co-design, reflection, and feedback. These processes honored teachers’ knowledge of students and evolving understandings of critical media literacy.

4. Data sources

Data from 2024-25 include professional development recordings, pre/post surveys, semi-structured life history and pedagogy interviews, and curricular artifacts (lessons and student work) from 12 in-service teachers (6 elementary, 6 secondary) across two California public school districts. Iterative coding moved from in vivo codes to emergent themes. Data also informed subsequent professional development design within the communities of practice.

5. Results

Results demonstrated teacher collective agency in adapting critical media literacy to local contexts and policy goals. Teachers designed place-based curricula addressing climate disinformation, algorithmic bias, and immigrant representation in media.

Two themes emerged: 1) the creation of community-responsive curricula rooted in students’ identities, media practices, and justice-engaged inquiries; and 2) increased teacher confidence in designing interdisciplinary critical media literacy lessons. Through co-design and coaching, teachers developed lessons that engaged students in analyzing dominant narratives and producing countermedia–poetry, newscasts, docu-shorts–that preserved local histories and challenged injustice.

6. Scholarly significance

Despite calls for justice-engaged media literacy, gaps persist between theory, policy, and practice. Critical media literacy as an ethical praxis, asks: How do educators and youth navigate digital ecologies shaped by algorithmic bias (Buolamwini, 2024), information overload (Naamati-Schneider & Alt, 2024), and systemic oppression (Freire, 2005)? This study found that centering educators as co-creators in critical media literacy curriculum can spark relational, place-based, and politically relevant outcomes. Combining Critical Media Literacy, Critical Global Disciplinary Literacies, and historically responsive literacy offers a model for humanizing, community-responsive education. When teachers lead this work, critical media literacy becomes a generative force for humanizing education (Filipiak, 2024) and unforgetting histories that shape new biosocial futures.

Author

• Andrea L. Gambino, University of Southern California