Teaching Critical Digital Literacy in Preservice Education Courses

• In Event: The Continuing and Renewed Urgency of Critical Digital Literacies: Ethical and Political Considerations on Research and Practice

Abstract

Objectives
Because of the needed radical shift in ideological conceptions of power within classrooms, CDL can be challenging to authentically incorporate into classes (e.g., Author 3, 2021; Share et al., 2019). In this exploratory study, I aim to show how CDL practices can be introduced by the teacher and taken up by students over the course of several weeks for authentic, sustained criticality.

Theoretical Perspectives
In classrooms, both teachers and students need to have an ideological shift to begin the process of being critical and critically engaging digital spaces and media that can then in turn shift the power structures of traditional educational systems (Author 3, 2021), which many teachers may struggle to fit it into their already overloaded curricula (Share et al., 2019). However, such time can and needs to be made to allow for the unvoiced to have a place in education (Hammer, 2011).

Methods/Data Sources
The course examined here is a required digital literacies course in a 5-year and traditional teacher preparation Master’s program and Literacy PhD program at a NorthEastern U.S. university. I examined two asynchronous online sections of the course in Fall 2020 (n=22/32 enrolled). I analyzed course artifacts, student assignments from the three Modules focusing on CDL, and any final that opted for the CDL option, and researcher memos. Data were coded using axial coding (Saldaña, 2012) based on the “Conceptual Understandings” in Share and colleagues’ (2019) Critical Media Literacy Framework (e.g., Social Constructivism).

Findings
Students showed mixed levels of criticality. Some students create sophisticated lesson plans in the second CDL Module wherein they gradually opened spaces for their prospective/current students to become more critical and create narratives that may not otherwise be present. For example, one student created lessons around the trope of the “angry black woman”, inviting students to interrogate and rewrite news articles around the topic.
In the final Module wherein students reinvented a seemingly innocuous digital tool for the classroom, many artfully articulated how some currently-used digital tools can have bias for some groups, explicating how they could be reinvented to give voice to the unvoiced. For example, many recognized accessibility either through languages or modes as oversights by the creators, excluding many groups.
However, others viewed digital tools as more neutral, building on or enhancing traditional literacy practices without considering how to take a critical stance, despite modeling of digital texts/activities that center the narratives of more marginalized groups.

Significance
Students expressed that they were empowered by the open spaces for expressing counternarratives. Even though many students might not be accustomed to pushing back on the systemic powers in education, this manuscript shows that most students’ assignments in the three CDL Modules engaged multiple aspects of CDL practices with implications for how instructors can continue to improve and open spaces for criticality. This study explores how students widened their own angles for the explored courses as well as their own and also how students create new meanings beyond the traditional forms in classrooms.

Author

• Olivia Grace Stewart, St. John's University