Part 2: Why is Critical Media Literacy Important to Student Learning?

If you have not had a chance to read the first part in this blog series on Media literacy, you can access it here: http://wp.me/pT6KW-3f.

So why is critical media literacy important to student learning? The current discourse and research shows that this skill is now, more than ever, crucial to our students’ engagement and learning. The teaching of critical media literacy skills is fundamental to students’ personal, social, and academic development. Rapid advancements in digital and computer technologies, the continuous influx and accessibility of media, and the changes in how we acquire and use information, demand that we prepare students to be informed citizens actively participating in social discourse. Students need to be prepared for a future in which they are engaged as critical thinkers in a democratic citizenship; in this role, they must be willing and able to question, assess, evaluate and respond to the representations and perspectives of the projected realities that they are continuously bombarded by.

We are living and teaching in an age that requires students to become literate in numerous areas. We can no longer merely educate with a focus on print literacy. As cultural theorist Douglas Kellner points out in his essay, Multiple Literacies and Critical Pedagogy in a Multicultural Society, “in addition to print literacies, we need to develop in students critical media literacy, computer literacy, and multimedia literacy…cultural literacy, social literacy and eco-literacy” if we are to prepare them for the challenges of the new technologies, the wealth of media materials, and the need to understand the multi-cultural society in which they live.

Kellner’s notion of teaching ‘multiple literacies’ is particularly important in English classrooms. In the current curriculum, there is no other area of study that incorporates multiple literacies to the extent that English does; in the study of language, literature and culture, it is impossible for teachers not to incorporate technological and computer, social and cultural, multi-media, print, and critical media literacies.

Part 1: What is Media Literacy?

The following blog is intended to enlighten students and parents about media literacy and its inclusion in the Ontario curriculum. At the end of the first decade of the 21st century, educators around the globe are increasingly focusing on the need to foster in students critical skills in media literacy. The paradigmatic shift in the ways that media infiltrates and influences our daily lives necessitate new perspectives, teachings, and critiques of the messages and representations that the media dictates. Media literacy, according to the Ontario English Curriculum documents, is “an informed and critical understanding of the nature of the media, the techniques used by them, and the impact of these techniques”. Furthermore, it involves “the ability to understand and use the mass media in an active, critical way”. Along with this definition the curriculum specifies 5 key concepts, or guiding principles of media literacy. 

They are:

1) All media are constructions
2) The media contain beliefs and value messages
3) Each person interprets messages differently
4) The media have special interests (commercial, ideological and political)
5) Each medium has its own language, style, form, techniques, conventions, and aesthetics

Critical media literacy is essentially the ability to recognize and understand the implications that these key concepts have on our personal, social and political lives. It is the ability to assess, interpret, decipher, de-code, de-construct, unpack, question, and critique messages, symbols and representations that are dictated by the media and propagated in popular culture. Stay tuned for a follow-up blog outlining why critical media literacy is important to student learning…