challenges in media education

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Sonia Livingstone

October 25th, 2018, media literacy: what are the challenges and how can we move towards a solution.

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Estimated reading time: 10 minutes

Last time I wrote about media literacy, I was glad to observe that, as the media increasingly mediate everything in society, there is growing emphasis on the importance of ensuring that people have the media literacy not only to engage with the media but to engage with society through the media . But I was also frustrated at some of the superficial hand-waving from policy makers towards media literacy and media education, seemingly without understanding what is involved or what the challenges are.

Silver bullet solution?

In our ever-more complex media and information environment, media literacy is being hailed as a silver bullet solution – hopefully to be dealt with by one-shot awareness-raising campaigns delivered by brand-promoting CSR departments, or by issuing vaguely-phrased high-handed injunctions to the (apparently unhearing and otherwise preoccupied) Department of Education. The motivation is rarely pedagogic but, rather, more the policy of ‘last resort.’

So, in the face of multiple problems of hate speech, or cyberbullying, or hacked YouTube content, or fake news etc., we are witnessing urgent calls to manage the media environment better – especially, to regulate the internet. But in the face of clashes of positive and negative rights, regulatory difficulties, powerful global companies and short-termist political expediency, this call in turn quickly morphs into a call for the supposedly ‘softer’ solution of educating the internet-using public.

Let me be clear. I am 100% in favour of educating the public. I have devoted years to arguing for more and better media literacy. In this digital age, I believe media literacy’s time has come, and its advocates should grab the opportunity with both hands and advance the cause with all their energy.

But energy and enthusiasm are most effectively expended when the challenges to be met are properly recognised. So let me set these out, as I see them, lest our energies are wasted and the window of opportunity is lost.

First, three educational challenges

• Investment . Make no mistake: education is an expensive solution in terms of time, effort and infrastructure. It needs a pedagogy, teacher training, curriculum resources, mechanisms for audit and assessment. To manage schools, governments devote an entire ministry to achieve this – yet they are simultaneously heavily criticised for their failures, and yet constantly under siege to solve yet more of society’s pressing ills.
• Reaching adults not in education or training is an even larger challenge, rarely met in any area of demand. So who is responsible, and who are or should be the agents of change? The answers will vary by country, culture and purpose. But they should be identified so that the actions of civil society, public services such as libraries, industry and other private actors can be coordinated.
• Exacerbating inequalities . We like to think of education as a democratising mechanism, because everyone has the right to school and training. But research consistently shows that education affects life outcomes differentially, advantaging the already-advantaged and failing sufficiently to benefit the less-advantaged, especially the so-called “hard to reach.” What proportion of media literacy resources are provided equivalently to all (risking exacerbating inequality) and what proportion are targeted at those who most need them? (I don’t know the answer, but someone should know it).

Then there’s the challenges of the digital

• Mission creep . As more and more of our lives are mediated – work, education, information, civic participation, social relationships and more – the scope of media literacy grows commensurately. Just today, in my Twitter feed, I read exhortations to ensure that people:

– Understand how black-boxed automated systems make potentially discriminator decisions

– Distinguish the intent and credibility signalling behind mis- and dis-information to tackle “fake news”

– Identify when a potential abuser is using their smart home technology to spy on them

– Weigh the privacy implications when they use public services in smart cities

It is, therefore, vital to set some priorities.

• Legibility . As I’ve observed before: we cannot teach what is unlearnable, and people cannot learn to be literate in what is illegible. We cannot teach people data literacy without transparency, or what to trust without authoritative markers of authenticity and expertise. So people’s media literacy depends on how their digital environment has been designed and regulated.
• Postponing the positives . The rapid pace of socio-technological innovation means everyone is scrambling to keep up, and just battling with the new harms popping up unexpectedly is extremely demanding. The result is that attention to the “ hygiene factors ” in the digital environment dominates efforts – so that media literacy risks being limited to safety and security. Our bigger ambitions for mediated learning, creativity, collaboration and participation get endlessly postponed in the process, especially for children and young people.

For the media literacy community itself, there’s some very real challenges of expertise and sustainability.  These may be dull, or even invisible, to those calling for the silver bullet solution. But they matter.

• Capacity and sustainability . The media literacy world comprises many small, enthusiastic, even idealistic initiatives, often based on a few people with remarkably little by way of sustained funding or infrastructure. The media literacy world is a bit like a start-up culture without the venture capitalists. We can talk a good story, but there’s always a risk of losing what’s been gained and having to start over.
• Evidence and evaluation . When you look closely at the evidence cited in this field, it’s not as robust or precise as one would like. Even setting aside the now tiresome debate over definitions of media literacy, the difficulties of measurement remain. Perhaps for the lack of agreed measures, there’s more evidence of outputs than outcomes, of short term reach rather than long term improvements. There’s remarkably few independent evaluations of what works. Compare media literacy interventions to other kinds of educational interventions – where’s the randomised control trials, the systematic evidence reviews, the targeted attention to specific subgroups of the population, the costed assessments of benefit relative to investment?

Last but certainly not least, there’s the politics of media literacy

• “Responsibilising” the individual. In policy talk especially, the call for media literacy and education to solve the problems of digital platforms tends, however inadvertently, to task the individual with dealing with the explosion of complexities, problems and possibilities of our digital society. In a policy field where governments fear they lack the power to take on the big platforms, it is the individual who must wise up, becoming media-savvy, rise to the challenge. Since, of course, the individual can hardly succeed where governments cannot, the politics of media literacy risks not only burdening but also blaming the individual for the problems of the digital environment.

As Ioanna Noula recently put it , “by emphasising kindness and ethics, these approaches also undermine  the value of conflict and dissent  for the advancement of democracy” and they “decontextualize” citizenship such that “ the attentions of concerned adults and youth alike are turned away from the social conditions that make young people vulnerable.” So instead of empowered media-literate citizens exercising their communicative entitlements , the emphasis becomes one of dutiful citizens, as part of a moralising discourse.

How can we turn things around?

I’ll make three suggestions, to end on a positive:

Before advocating for media literacy as part of a solution to the latest socio-technological ill, let’s take a holistic approach. This means, let’s get really clear what the problem is, and identify what role media or digital technologies play in that problem – if any! We might even ask for a “ theory of change ” to clarify how the different components of a potential solution are expected to work together. And, getting ambitious now, what about a responsible organisation – whether local, national or international – tasked with coordinating all these actions and evaluating the outcomes?

Then let’s figure out all the other players, so that we can articulate which part of the solution media literacy may provide, and what others will contribute – regulators, policy makers, civil society organisations, the media themselves – thereby avoiding the insidious tendency for the whole problem to get dumped at the feet of media educators. We might further expect – demand – that the other players should embed media literacy expectations into their very DNA, so that all organisations shaping the digital environment share the task of explaining their operation to the public and providing user-friendly mechanisms of accountability.

Last, let’s take the questions of value, empowerment and politics seriously. What does good look like? Is it dutiful citizens being kind to each other online, behaving nicely in an orderly fashion? Or is it deliberating, debating, even conflicting citizens? Citizens who express themselves through digital media, organise through digital media, protest to the authorities and insist on being heard? I think it should be the latter, not least because our societies are increasingly divided, angry and dis-empowered. It’s time that people are heard, and it’s time for the digital environment to live up to its democratizing promise. But this requires change on behalf of the policy makers. We should not only ask whether people trust media, or trust the government. We should also ask whether the media trusts the people and treats them with respect. And whether governments and related authorities and civic bodies trust the people, treat them with respect, and hear what they say.

This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Media Policy Project nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.   

About the author

Sonia Livingstone OBE is Professor of Social Psychology in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE. Taking a comparative, critical and contextual approach, her research examines how the changing conditions of mediation are reshaping everyday practices and possibilities for action. She has published twenty books on media audiences, media literacy and media regulation, with a particular focus on the opportunities and risks of digital media use in the everyday lives of children and young people. Her most recent book is The class: living and learning in the digital age (2016, with Julian Sefton-Green). Sonia has advised the UK government, European Commission, European Parliament, Council of Europe and other national and international organisations on children’s rights, risks and safety in the digital age. She was awarded the title of Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2014 'for services to children and child internet safety.' Sonia Livingstone is a fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, the British Psychological Society, the Royal Society for the Arts and fellow and past President of the International Communication Association (ICA). She has been visiting professor at the Universities of Bergen, Copenhagen, Harvard, Illinois, Milan, Oslo, Paris II, Pennsylvania, and Stockholm, and is on the editorial board of several leading journals. She is on the Executive Board of the UK Council for Child Internet Safety, is a member of the Internet Watch Foundation’s Ethics Committee, is an Expert Advisor to the Council of Europe, and was recently Special Advisor to the House of Lords’ Select Committee on Communications, among other roles. Sonia has received many awards and honours, including honorary doctorates from the University of Montreal, Université Panthéon Assas, the Erasmus University of Rotterdam, the University of the Basque Country, and the University of Copenhagen. She is currently leading the project Global Kids Online (with UNICEF Office of Research-Innocenti and EU Kids Online), researching children’s understanding of digital privacy (funded by the Information Commissioner’s Office) and writing a book with Alicia Blum-Ross called ‘Parenting for a Digital Future (Oxford University Press), among other research, impact and writing projects. Sonia is chairing LSE’s Truth, Trust and Technology Commission in 2017-2018, and participates in the European Commission-funded research networks, DigiLitEY and MakEY. She runs a blog called www.parenting.digital and contributes to the LSE’s Media Policy Project blog. Follow her on Twitter @Livingstone_S

There’s a funny thing about media literacy, and that is that media have crept their way into everyone’s daily life. A young person knows who’s a friend and who’s not and media have a lot to do with that…. Isn’t media literacy also: discussing daily life and the latest news wit peers and teacher and trying to reach a common goal: making the world a better, more liveable place? PS I’m a schoollibrarian in Amsterdam, Holland and for me media literacy also means also informing teachers about books that tell about worldwide digital developments, like The raod to Unfreedom by Timoty Snyder, not exactly hopeful information, but it’s better to know than not to know.

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Article contents

Critical media literacy in teacher education, theory, and practice.

• Jeff Share , Jeff Share University of California Los Angeles
• Tatevik Mamikonyan Tatevik Mamikonyan School of Education, University of California Los Angeles
•  and  Eduardo Lopez Eduardo Lopez University of California Los Angeles
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.1404
• Published online: 30 September 2019
• This version: 20 September 2023
• Previous version

Democracy in the digital networked age of “fake news” and “alternative facts” requires new literacy skills and critical awareness to read, write, and use media and technology to empower civic participation and social transformation. Unfortunately, not many educators have been prepared to teach students how to think critically with and about the media and technology that engulf us. Across the globe there is a growing movement to develop media and information literacy curriculum (UNESCO) and train teachers in media education (e-Media Education Lab), but these attempts are limited and in danger of co-optation by the faster growing, better financed, and less critical education and information technology corporations. It is essential to develop a critical response to the new information communication technologies, artificial intelligence, and algorithms that are embedded in all aspects of society. The possibilities and limitations are vast for teaching educators to enter K-12 classrooms and teach their students to use various media, critically question all types of texts, challenge problematic representations, and create alternative messages. Through applying a critical media literacy framework that has evolved from cultural studies and critical pedagogy, students at all grade levels can learn to critically analyze the messages and create their own alternative media. The voices of teachers engaging in this work can provide pragmatic insight into the potential and challenges of putting the theory into practice in K-12 public schools.

• critical literacy
• critical pedagogy
• media education
• media literacy
• critical media literacy
• social justice
• politics of representation
• cultural studies
• teacher education

Updated in this version

The authors made minor revisions to this text to reflect more recent scholarship. The reference list and further readings have similarly been updated.

Introduction

It is a formidable challenge to prepare critical educators to work inside a system in which every brick in the wall has been laid to transmit the information, skills, and ideas necessary to reproduce the social norms, inequities, ideologies, and alienation that are undermining the quality and sustainability of life on this planet. However, education can be a powerful tool to challenge these problems and create opportunities for students to work in solidarity with others to create a more socially and environmentally just world. To support these changes, we need teachers ready to engage students in critical inquiry by posing questions about systemic and structural issues of power, hierarchies of oppression, and social injustice. In the current media and information age, information communication technologies (ICTs) are available to either continue the control and degradation or to deconstruct the systems of oppression and reconstruct a more just and sustainable society.

Digital technology is opening opportunities for individual participation and alternative points of view, while at the same time a handful of enormous media and technology corporations have become the dominant storytellers, often repeating the same story at the expense of countless different perspectives and creative ways of thinking. Many of these storytellers are actually story-sellers, more interested in peddling ideas and products than informing, enlightening, inspiring, or challenging. While young people are using more media, they are also being used more by media companies. Giant transnational corporations are targeting youth as one of the most valuable markets for building brand loyalty and selling to advertisers. Researchers found 8- to 18-year-olds in the United States spend well over 10 hours a day interacting with various forms of media, such as music, computers, video games, television, film, and print ( Rideout et al., 2011 ). Another investigation discovered that 95% of American 13- to 17-year-olds have access to a smartphone and 97% say they are online daily and 46% use it constantly ( Vogels et al., 2022 ).

Not only is the amount of time with media increasing but the quality of that engagement is also changing by becoming more commercial and rarely critical. Researchers at Stanford University administered six tasks to 3,466 high schools across 14 states in the US to judge their ability to assess online information. In one task, students were asked to evaluate the credibility of a website that claimed to “disseminate factual reports” and 96% failed to learn about the site’s ties to the fossil fuel industry. In a different task, over half of students believed an anonymously posted video purporting to show voter fraud in the US was real, even though it was filmed in Russia ( Breakstone et al., 2021 ). In another study, Vosoughi et al. (2018) examined approximately 126,000 stories tweeted over 4.5 million times between 2006 and 2017 . The researchers were interested in understanding what accounted for the differential diffusion of verified true and false news stories. They found that false news stories spread “farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth because humans, not robots, are more likely to spread it” (p. 5). In analyzing the tweets, the authors concluded, false stories were 70% more likely to be retweeted because people found them not only more novel but the stories also inspired emotional responses of fear, disgust, or surprise.

The concern about “fake news” has encouraged many people to recognize the need for critical readers and writers of media. Some have suggested that we simply need better cognitive skills to determine truth from lies. However, making sense of the media and our information society is far more complicated than a reductionist idea of simply finding the truth. Rather than judging information as either true or false, students need to learn to search for multiple sources, different perspectives, and various types of evidence to triangulate and evaluate findings. In order to best evaluate and understand the information, they also need to question the influence of media in shaping the message and positioning the audience. Since all knowledge is an interpretation ( Kincheloe, 2007 ), interpreting the meaning of a message is a complex process that requires skills to probe empirical evidence, evaluate subjective biases, analyze the medium and construction of the text, and explore the social contexts.

This is an opportunity for educators to guide their students to think critically with and about the ICTs and media that surround them. Morrell et al. (2013) argue that the technology itself will not bring about transformative educational change. “That change will only come through teachers who draw on critical frameworks to create learning communities where the use of these tools becomes an empowering enterprise” (p. 14). Therefore, the changes in media, technology, and society require critical media literacy (CML) that can support teachers and students to question and create with and about the very tools that can empower or oppress, entertain or distract, inform or mislead, and buy or sell everything from lifestyles to politicians. Now more than ever, teachers should encourage students to be reading, viewing, listening to, interacting with, and creating a multitude of texts, from digital podcasts to multimedia productions.

Teacher Education

Even though youth are immersed in a world in which media and technology have entered all aspects of their lives and society, few teacher education programs are preparing teachers to help their students to critically understand the potential and limitations of these changes. It is crucial that new teachers learn how to teach their K-12 students to critically read and write everything, from academic texts to social media.

This means that schools of education responsible for training the new wave of teachers must be up to date, not just with the latest technology, but more importantly, with critical media literacy (CML) theory and pedagogy in order to prepare teachers and students to think and act critically with and about media and technology. In Canada, where media literacy is mandatory in every grade from 1 to 12, most new teachers are not receiving media literacy training in their preservice programs ( Wilson & Duncan, 2009 ). Researchers investigating media education in the United Kingdom and the US have found that many teachers are unprepared to teach media education and that professional learning opportunities are limited ( Butler, 2020 ; Kirwan et al., 2003 ). The progress has been slow, especially considering that inclusion of media literacy in formal public education has a history dating back to the 1980s in Australia, Britain, and Canada. However, nonformal media education has been occurring in many parts of the world for decades ( Hart, 1998 ; Kaplún, 1998 ; Kubey, 1997 ; Pegurer Caprino & Martínez-Cerdá, 2016 ; Prinsloo & Criticos, 1991 ).

While it is difficult to know for sure who is and who is not teaching critically about media and technology ( Mihailidis, 2008 ), there seems to be an increased interest in media literacy in the United States. In 2022 , the National Council of Teachers of English published a position statement recommending implementation of media education in English Language Arts along with two special issue journal publications ( Lynch, 2021 ; Kist & Christel, 2022 ) devoted to critical media literacy, arguing that “media education must be an essential component of the professional identity of teachers” ( National Council of Teachers of English, 2022 ).

As technology and media continue to evolve and increasingly enter public and private spaces, more educators are recognizing the need for training new teachers about media literacy ( Domine, 2011 ; Goetze et al., 2005 ; Hobbs, 2007a ) and some are even addressing the need to teach about CML ( Flores-Koulish et al., 2011 ; Funk et al., 2016 ; Robertson & Hughes, 2011 ; Trust et al., 2022 ). Researchers Tiede et al. (2015) studied 64 universities or colleges of teacher education in Germany and 316 U.S. public educational institutions that provide teacher training and graduate studies, concluding that very few offer more than media didactics (basic educational technology that teaches with media, not about media). From their data in the United States, they report, “media education, with emphasis on the instructional practices associated with the critical evaluation of media, culture, and society, were scarce, representing only 2% of all study programs in teacher training programs” (pp. 540−541). In Germany, the percentage increases to 25%, but “media didactics tends to be emphasized to the disadvantage of media education in both countries” (p. 542).

In 2011 , the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) published a curriculum guide online in 11 languages for training teachers in media education ( Grizzle & Wilson, 2011 ), declaring that “teacher training in media and information literacy will be a major challenge for the global education system at least for the next decade” ( Pérez-Tornero & Tayie, 2012 , p. 11). 1 In Europe, Ranieri and Bruni (2018) analyzed the successes and challenges of training preservice and in-service teachers about media and digital literacy. An initiative called e-Media Educational Lab, funded by the European Commission, provided blended training to 279 preservice teachers and 81 in-service teachers in six countries. Based on surveys and fieldnotes, Ranieri and Bruni (2018) reported that the preservice and in-service teachers found critical media analysis and media production to be very important; they described their intent to transfer their media competency to their classrooms and expressed a desire to learn more practical ways to help their students develop media competencies.

UNESCO’s approach to media education combines media and information literacy (MIL) to include many competencies, from learning about and using information communication technologies to thinking critically about ethics and democracy. Carolyn Wilson (2012) explains, “MIL is both a content area and way of teaching and learning; it is not only about the acquisition of technical skills, but the development of a critical framework and approaches” (p. 16).

Combining information technology with media-cultural studies is essential, but still infrequent. Within the current wave of educational reform that prioritizes the newest technology and career readiness over civic engagement and critical inquiry, schools are more likely to adopt only information technology or information literacy and not critical media education. In the United States, few universities offer more than a single course in media literacy and most do not even offer that ( Goetze et al., 2005 ; Meehan et al., 2015 ).

Schwarz (2001) asserts that because of the power of emerging literacies, “teacher education needs media literacy as an essential tool and an essential topic in the new millennium” (pp. 111−112). She calls for integrating media literacy across all subject areas of teacher education, “from methods courses and educational psychology to foundational courses and student teaching” (p. 118). This interdisciplinary approach for media education could be easier now for K-12 teachers in the United States since the Common Core State Standards require literacy to be taught and technology to be used across the curriculum ( California Common Core State Standards, 2013 ; Moore & Bonilla, 2014 ; Trust et al., 2022 ).

Two studies with a total of 31 preservice teachers found a discrepancy between their positive attitudes for teaching media literacy and the lack of attention and support in their teacher education programs to prepare them to teach MIL ( Gretter & Yadav, 2018 ). Based on interviews with these preservice teachers, Gretter and Yadav (2018) report that they associated MIL with critical thinking skills and expressed concerns about not knowing how to teach MIL because their teacher preparation program encouraged “teaching with technology and not necessarily about technology” (p. 115). These preservice teachers complained about “a lack of preparation to help them transfer their knowledge of digital media to MIL pedagogies that would benefit students” (p. 111). This highlights the importance of preparing educators with the theory and conceptual understandings as well as the pedagogy and practical applications for how to teach their students to critically analyze and create media.

Teaching Teachers Critical Media Literacy

Transforming education to critically use media, technology, and popular culture for social and environmental justice is the overarching goal of a critical media literacy (CML) course in the teacher education program at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). The authors of this article have been involved in designing and teaching this course to in-service and preservice teachers. Through combining theory from cultural studies and critical pedagogy with practical classroom applications of digital media and technology, this course prepares K-12 educators to teach their students how to critically analyze and create all types of media. In 2011 , this four-unit course on CML was officially approved and became a required class for all students working on their teaching credential at UCLA.

The teacher education program at UCLA is primarily a two-year master’s and credential program that accepts about 130 candidates annually. The program is committed to developing social justice educators to work with and improve the schooling conditions of California’s ethnically, culturally, and linguistically diverse children. While most of the students go through the two-year program, additional pathways for earning a teaching credential and master’s degree have been offered, such as a master’s-only program for in-service teachers with two years or more of full-time teaching experience.

The CML class is taught in separate sections, usually divided by subjects, with 25−50 students per section. Most of the candidates taking the class are student teaching at the same time, except for the master’s-only candidates, who were teaching full-time while attending the class once a week in the evening. The class includes lectures, discussions, and activities interwoven into each session during the 10-week quarter.

Beginning with a theoretical overview, the course explores the development of media education that is defined less as a specific body of knowledge or set of skills and more as a framework of conceptual understandings ( Buckingham, 2003 ). Much of the theory behind CML has evolved from cultural studies, a field of critical inquiry that began in the 20th century in Europe and continues to grow with new critiques of media and society. From the 1930s through the 1960s, researchers at the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research used critical social theory to analyze how media culture and the new tools of communication technology induce ideology and social control. In the 1960s, researchers at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham added to the earlier concerns of ideology with a more sophisticated understanding of the audience as active constructors of reality, not simply mirrors of an external reality. Kellner (1995) explains that cultural studies has continued to grow and incorporate concepts of semiotics, feminism, multiculturalism, and postmodernism. Incorporating a dialectical understanding of political economy, textual analysis, and audience theory, cultural studies critiques media culture as dynamic discourses that reproduce dominant ideologies as well as entertain, educate, and offer the possibilities for counter-hegemonic alternatives ( Hammer & Kellner, 2009 ).

Critical media literacy includes three dimensions ( Share & Gambino, 2022 ). The first involves the content students learn about systems, structures, and ideologies that reproduce hierarchies of power and knowledge concerning race, gender, class, sexuality and other forms of identity and environmental justice, as well as general understandings about how media and communication function. The second dimension engages the skills to critically think and question media representations and biases, to deconstruct and reconstruct media texts, and use a variety of media to access, analyze, evaluate, and create. The third involves developing a disposition for empathy, critical consciousness, and empowerment to take action to challenge and transform society to be more socially and environmentally just. This third dimension is based on Freire’s (2010) notion of conscientização , a revolutionary critical consciousness that involves perception as well as action against oppression. These three dimensions of critical media literacy pedagogy are supported through an inquiry-based democratic approach that follows ideas of transformative educators like John Dewey and Paulo Freire. We incorporate feminist theory and critical pedagogy to analyze relationships between media and audiences, information and power ( Carlson et al., 2013 ; Garcia et al., 2013 ). When we first began teaching the course, we used a simple framework with five core concepts and key questions from the Center for Media Literacy. 2 To emphasize the critical potential of these ideas, while providing an accessible tool for teachers to use in the classroom, the following critical media literacy framework was developed, with six conceptual understandings and questions, as shown in Table 1 ( Kellner & Share, 2019 ).

These six conceptual understandings and questions are referred to regularly and are addressed in all lesson plans. It is important for teachers to understand the concepts and questions because theory should inform practice for all three dimensions. However, it is better for K-12 students to learn to ask the questions rather than memorize the concepts, since the questions, with appropriate guidance, can lead students on a path of inquiry where they are more likely to make meaning themselves, related to the conceptual understandings.

The CML framework is designed to help teachers and their students question the role of power and ideology that socialize and control society through making some people and ideas seem “normal” and “natural” while the rest are “othered” and “marginalized” ( Hall, 2003 ). This critical framing supports teachers and students to deepen their explorations of racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, overconsumption, environmental exploitation, and other problematic representations in media. Candidates analyze and discuss current media examples, while also learning how to use various ICTs to create their own media with alternative counter-hegemonic representations. Using an inquiry process and democratic pedagogy, problems are posed to the students to collaboratively wrestle with, unpack, and respond to through media production.

Critical media literacy promotes an expansion of our understanding of literacy to include many types of texts, such as images, sounds, music, video games, social media, advertising, popular culture, and print, as well as a deepening of critical analysis to explore the connections between information and power. In our digital networked media age, it is not enough to teach students how to read and write just with print while their world has moved far beyond letters on a page. Literacy education in the 21st century requires breaking from traditional practices to include all the varied ways people communicate with media, technology, and any tool that facilitates the transfer of information or connects people. This calls for new skills and understandings to decode and analyze as well as to create and produce all types of texts. The California Teaching Performance Expectations also require teacher education programs to expand this view of literacy and integrate media and technology into coursework in order to “deepen teaching and learning to provide students with opportunities to participate in a digital society and economy” ( California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, 2016 , p. 9).

Each class starts by reviewing and applying the conceptual understandings and questions. Since one goal of the course is for candidates to understand that literacy includes reading and writing all types of texts, we encourage students to analyze as well as produce media. A series of assignments requires candidates to work together to create various types of media projects such as visual posters, photographs, podcasts, memes, digital stories, and social media. The candidates are also expected to work collaboratively on a CML lesson plan and learning segment that they write up, present a summary of to the whole class, and when possible, also teach it. For a detailed description of this course, see Share (2015) and visit the UCLA Library Critical Media Literacy Research Guide for links to articles, videos, and websites used in the course. 3

Table 1. Critical Media Literacy Framework

From a desire to explore if and how former students are applying the skills and knowledge gained from the critical media literacy (CML) course into their teaching practice, we created an online survey for students who had taken the course. Through purposeful sampling, we sent out the survey to the 738 students who had taken the CML course and ended up with 185 usable responses (25% response rate), 153 preservice and 32 in-service teachers. Of the 185 respondents, 53 taught elementary school and 132 were secondary-level teachers. The breakdown of the middle school and high school teachers was: 38 science, 34 math, 33 social sciences, 28 English, and several reported teaching a combination of subjects as well as some who taught other areas such as music, visual arts, Spanish, English language development, or adult education. The span of experience was wide; some just started teaching and some had been teaching over seven years, yet most of the teachers (52%) had been teaching between two and three years.

The mixed method survey included 20 questions. The first eight sought to identify participants’ teaching background. The remaining 12 questions inquired about their experiences teaching CML skills and concepts to their K-12 students. Ten quantitative questions used a Likert scale with a choice of responses, including very frequently, frequently, occasionally, rarely, and never, as well as an option to choose not applicable. The final two qualitative questions were open-ended in which respondents could type their thoughts about any “memorable moment(s) teaching critical media literacy” and “any additional comments.” During the analysis phase, we found it helpful to combine the categories very frequently and frequently and refer to them as VF/F.

Voices From the Field

Using mixed methods of quantitative and qualitative data, we analyzed the survey responses to explore teachers’ ideas about what they had been doing with their students. The overall feedback suggested that the majority of the respondents had brought aspects of media literacy education into their K-12 classrooms, and sometimes even incorporated CML. One of the most recurring patterns we noticed was that these teachers had been expanding the traditional concept of literacy by engaging their students with various types of media.

Teaching With Media

In reply to the first question, most of the respondents reported having integrated media into their class activities: 64% VF/F, 30% occasionally, 6% rarely, and no one responded never ( N = 185). The responses to Question 1 were very similar for elementary and secondary teachers, with only a 1% to 5% difference. Where we saw greater variation was when comparing the subject matter of secondary teachers. The English and science teachers had the highest percentages (75% and 76%) of VF/F responses to Question 1 about integrating media into class activities. Math teachers, by contrast, reported the lowest percentage, with 44% reporting VF/F and 15% rarely integrating media into the curriculum (see Figure 1 ).

Figure 1. Responses from secondary teachers to Question 1 about how often they integrated media into class activities.

While these responses demonstrated an overall high amount of media integration, it was not clear how the teachers integrated media and what students were doing with the media. The responses from Question 5 (“my students have created the following media”) provided more information about the students’ interactions with media, showing that the vast majority of respondents (92%) had their students create some type of media (see Figure 2 for a list of the various media students created).

Since the question only asked teachers to check the box for the type of media their students created, we did not know how often this occurred or with what degree of analysis. Questions 1 and 5 indicated that teaching with media occurred with over 90% of the respondents.

Figure 2. Responses to Question 5 about the different types of media that all 185 respondents report their students have created. They were asked to choose all that apply.

Teaching About Media

The second question tried to find out more about those interactions with media by asking respondents to rate how often they had given their “students opportunities to engage in media analysis.” For Question 2, about one-third of all 185 respondents, 32%, reported VF/F, 43% occasionally, 21% rarely, and 4% never. When comparing responses from Questions 1 and 2, the respondents seemed to have been doing more teaching with media (Question 1) than teaching about media (Question 2) (see Figure 3 ). A similar finding was mentioned in the research conducted in Germany and the United States by Tiede et al. (2015) .

Figure 3. Comparing all responses from Question 1 about integrating media into class activities (teaching with media) with Question 2 about engaging in media analysis (teaching about media).

A more nuanced perspective of Question 2 is possible when comparing the responses about media analysis from different content area secondary teachers. In response to Question 2, the teachers who reported VF/F were the following: 63% of English teachers reported giving the most opportunities for their students to engage in media analysis, as compared to almost half as often by 32% of science teachers and about five times less often by 12% of math teachers (see Figure 4 ). Since literacy is a primary goal of English instruction, it is not surprising that English teachers reported the highest levels of media analysis ( Hobbs, 2007b ).

It is important to recognize that teaching about media can be a highly complex and multifaceted undertaking, especially when done through a CML lens. For example, the second conceptual understanding encourages students to analyze the codes and conventions of the media text and the medium through which they travel by asking how the text was constructed and delivered or accessed. This, in itself, can have many layers and yet is just one of six questions intended to help students think critically about media. Livingstone (2018) asserts, “media literacy is needed not only to engage with the media but to engage with society through the media .” As Luke and Freebody (1997) argue, it is not enough to only have a psychological approach to literacy, as if reading and writing is just an individual cognitive process. We need to also bring a sociological lens into the process of questioning the contexts, the dominant ideologies, and the systems that make some things seem “natural” or “normal.” The CML framework is a holistic tool for thinking about and questioning the dynamic role media play in our relationships with ourselves, each other, and society. Responses and comments to other questions in the survey provide more insight into how some teachers have engaged their students in various types of media analysis.

Figure 4. Comparing responses from different content areas about Question 2 regarding how often secondary teachers gave their students opportunities to engage in media analysis.

Evaluating Information and Advertising

In the qualitative responses to Questions 11 and 12, teachers mentioned embracing basic media literacy principles in the ways students were evaluating the credibility of information and advertising as well as creating different types of media. The popularity of the term “fake news” and the growing amount of disinformation have increased the challenge to distinguish misinformation and propaganda from journalism and scientifically researched facts ( Rogow, 2018 ). An elementary teacher who reported “frequently” integrating media into the classroom, asserted:

Though my students are younger and some of these concepts are more difficult to teach than others, I find it important to bring up especially in terms of making sure they don’t believe every YouYube video they watch. We’ve had many meaningful discussions about what can be created for a video shouldn’t just be accepted as the truth. For example, the ‘mermaid’ documentary that came out a few years ago had all of my students convinced that they had found a mermaid. It led to an interesting discussion on hoaxes and further reading about Bigfoo[t] and other such stories.

Since all media contain bias because they are created by subjective humans, it is important for teachers to help their students to recognize the bias and also be able to judge the credibility of information. A high school math teacher wrote:

It has not happened until this school year, when I began teaching Statistics. I introduced some pictographs for students to analyze and an article for students to read about how a website stated that if polls were unskewed, Trump would be leading the polls for election. I had students read and discuss about the validity and why/why not it is trustable.

Several respondents mentioned having their students study political advertising, and since all U.S. elections are now multimillion-dollar advertising campaigns (e.g., Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign won the top prizes at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Awards), there is little distinction between selling products, ideas, and political candidates.

Analyzing advertising is an important aspect of media education because advertising is the motor that drives commercial media and has become so common in our lives that there are few spaces that are completely ad-free ( Jhally, 2003 ). Several respondents reported about their students investigating advertisements for false health messages, misleading packaging, political campaigns, tobacco, alcohol, and different perspectives. One secondary English teacher wrote, “My students took pictures of advertisements that surrounded their neighborhood and we analyzed them for patterns, themes, and purposes.” A high school science teacher reported, “I had many times this past year where students were able to reflect on marketing strategies and how they affect the viewer’s perspective of their life and themselves. Students made great connections.”

During the critical media literacy (CML) class, students scrutinize consumer culture and the role advertising plays in creating anxieties, shaping desires, and normalizing representations about all things, from consumption to gender, race, and class. Candidates in the CML class learn about these ideas through readings, by analyzing advertisements, and also by creating ads for different target audiences. When asked about the media their students had created, one third reported their students created advertisements.

Creating Different Types of Media

When students are taught print literacy, they are instructed how to decode letters on a page and how to write with those letters to construct words, sentences, and paragraphs. The same process of teaching reading and writing should be applied to visual images, movies, songs, video games, social media, and all the various multimedia texts that students are encountering daily. In responses from the survey, teachers reported about having their students write and create many different types of texts beyond print (see Figure 2 ).

One English teacher wrote that having students create media was “very successful. They loved being able to create memes, posters, Prezis, etc. to present their work.” An elementary teacher shared about students “creating podcasts/npr style news stories regarding UN sustainability goals.” Several respondents commented on their students designing commercials or challenging ads by producing spoofs that parody the ads. One middle school teacher shared, “students analyzed ads for nicotine and alcohol products, then used the practice with critical media skills to create ‘anti-ads’ with Google drawings.”

During the first year of teaching, a high school science teacher reported about a memorable moment when “creating a multi-lingual, easy-to-understand and scientifically supported pamphlet on the hazards in LA’s environment.” A high school Spanish teacher wrote about his students creating critical memes in Spanish, like the ones they created in the critical media literacy (CML) class. During the session exploring racism and media, candidates challenge racist representations through creating racial myth-busting memes. As a strategy to demonstrate the value of media production, the CML class has students create various media in almost every session, and these activities are often the favorite lessons mentioned in the end of course evaluations.

Increasing Engagement

While engagement is not a learning objective, all teaching benefits from students being engaged in their learning. One of the patterns that emerged from the responses was teachers’ observations that student engagement increased. An eighth-grade English teacher wrote that after incorporating media literacy, the students’ “entire attitude toward learning shifted. Especially the hard to reach students.” An elementary teacher reported, “Media literacy has made great contributions in my class with science research in the past. The simple act of using google images, google maps and finding credible sources has sparked learning and interest in my class.” Another elementary teacher shared about using critical media literacy (CML) to analyze food justice issues: “They were instantly engaged and students who had a difficult time writing and with critical thinking then did not.”

A secondary science teacher reported, “Students spent the entire class engaged in discussion when I intended for it to only be an introduction to the unit.” Another high school science teacher wrote, “When I did teach a class specifically geared towards media literacy, it was great because students were engaged. They were quick at analyzing images and creating their own.” A third science teacher wrote, “using critical media literacy made engaging my students in abstract chemistry concepts more meaningful and engaging.” Engagement tends to increase when students are genuinely interested and intrinsically motivated, something that often comes out of personal connection, a sense of meaningfulness, and an authentic belief in the value of the learning ( Dewey, 1963 ). These are all elements of good CML pedagogy. A high school science teacher described the feelings of students and their parents as they responded to their CML work: “My favorite moments are students exuding pride and passion over the work they are creating that speaks to their perspectives and experiences; parents proud of their students’ media creations.” Feelings of pride and passion are important for all students to experience; they help lower students’ affective filters for learning ( Krashen, 1995 ) and increase intrinsic motivation to want to learn.

Critical Media Literacy

As we analyzed teachers’ written responses, we saw a number of comments in which they were taking basic media literacy concepts to deeper levels of criticality. Several mentioned how useful the class was to understanding critical theory and be able to see how it can be enacted in their K-12 classroom. Similar findings were mentioned after Joanou (2017) analyzed data about a critical media literacy (CML) class taught to master’s-level practicing K-12 educators. Joanou (2017) reported, “critical media literacy helps bridge the gap between theory and practice” (p. 40). The use of media texts and popular culture can provide relevant examples for entry into abstract concepts that are often politically and emotionally charged, and sometimes too sensitive or too distant to begin discussing on a personal level.

Teaching about the connections between information and power reflects a key goal of CML ( Kellner & Share, 2007 ) and our respondents demonstrated this through their qualitative comments about recreating counter-narratives, analyzing the politics of representation, making critical connections between history and current events with media texts, and engaging in political, social, and environmental media activism. Questions 3 and 4 attempted to assess the frequency in which teachers were bringing critical aspects of media education to their students.

Question 3 asks teachers to rate how often: “My students have engaged in media analysis by exploring media representations of ideology, race, class, gender, sexuality, environmentalism, and/or other social justice issues.” Elementary and secondary teachers reported almost identical frequencies in response to Question 3: 22% in both groups reported VF/F while 42% (elementary) and 45% (secondary) stated occasionally. When asked Question 4 about making connections between information and power, the differences increased: 39% of the secondary teachers responded doing this VF/F while just 23% of the elementary teachers reported doing this VF/F.

In-service teachers reported higher frequencies for Question 3: 54% of in-service teachers reported VF/F while preservice teachers reported 14% VF/F. For Question 4: 56% of in-service teachers reported VF/F compared with 30% of preservice teachers who reported VF/F.

When comparing responses separated by subject matter with secondary teachers, 33% of English teachers and 30% of social science teachers reported VF/F for engaging in critical media analysis, as seen in Question 3 about exploring media representations. This is considerably higher than the 16% of science teachers and 9% of math teachers reporting VF/F. The math and science teachers reported the highest percentages for rarely or never having their students explore media representations of social justice issues (see Figure 5 ). The literature supports similar findings. Garii and Rule (2009) reported that student teachers had a difficult time integrating social justice into math and science content due to several factors. In their research with novice elementary teachers, Garii and Rule discovered that the candidates were not confident in their ability to teach math and science and had limited and unsophisticated knowledge of the content. They also viewed math and science “to be a set of routinized, algorithmic practices that lead to a single, correct answer and neither science nor mathematics are assumed to be closely connected to real-world issues and concerns” (p. 491). Given that they are struggling to learn and understand the content, math and science candidates turned to classroom textbooks to guide instructional practices. Incorporating nontraditional practices or making connections to students’ lives becomes a challenge because they disconnect social justice from their teaching and focus on teaching to the content ( Garii & Rule, 2009 ).

Figure 5. Responses to Question 3 from secondary teachers about how often they engaged their students in critical “media analysis by exploring media representations of ideology, race, class, gender, sexuality, environmentalism, and/or other social justice issues.”

One of the more significant findings of the study is the number of respondents reporting they “noticed that using critical media literacy encourages critical thinking among students” (Question 9). Of the preservice respondents, 61% reported VF/F, and for the in-service teachers, the percentages jump to 81% who reported VF/F. In both cases, the majority of respondents expressed their feelings that CML promotes critical thinking most of the time (see Figure 6 ). A middle school social science teacher wrote that after teaching CML, “students were deeper thinkers and our discussions were so much richer. Students were highly engaged and more invested in the classroom.” When comparing grade levels for Question 9, we see 78% of elementary teachers reported that using CML VF/F encourages critical thinking, and 61% of secondary teachers reported VF/F. This large percentage of elementary teachers reporting about CML encouraging critical thinking shows great promise for the potential of CML in the early grades.

Figure 6. Comparison of preservice and in-service teachers’ responses to Question 9 about how often they have noticed CML encourages critical thinking among their students.

Creating Counter Narratives and Supporting Students’ Voices

Many of the responses regarding transformative education centered on guiding students to create counternarratives and supporting student ideas and voices. Respondents mentioned activities that enabled their students to recreate media texts with a critical lens. These counternarratives included recreating superhero comic books, news, advertisements, digital storytelling, national holiday observances, and poems. A high school English teacher noted, “after analyzing recent and popular superhero comic books, my students used the comic medium to tell an autobiographical story wherein they exhibited power in the face of oppression.” A middle school English teacher reported:

The most memorable lesson I’ve taught involving critical media literacy was a unit based on perseverance and the power of the human spirit in regards to power structures and oppression. After analyzing multiple types of media, students created their own VoiceThread using spoken word in order to share their own messages of perseverance. It was incredibly powerful to hear their messages.

For most respondents, the notion of enabling their students to share personal stories using multimedia tools meant that they were integrating critical media pedagogy into their teaching practice. Traditionally, personal and experiential knowledge as a form of literacy is not often valued; thus, it is a critical pedagogical orientation to encourage students to recreate media texts that reflect their intersecting realities and challenge the pervasive dominant ideologies. Students’ personal histories become scholarly pursuits when digital storytelling encompasses media production skills taught through a critical media literacy (CML) framework. Vasquez (2017) asserts, “students learn best when what they are learning has importance in their lives, using the topics, issues, and questions that they raise should therefore be an important part of creating the classroom curriculum” (p. 8). A middle school math and technology teacher commented about incorporating CML into her master’s inquiry project:

The project we ultimately created was a digital storytelling project, in which students interviewed their parents or someone they admire and created some sort of media project around that story to tell counter-narratives to the dominant story told in media about people of color.

Guiding students to create counternarratives can be an empowering instructional strategy that nurtures their personal realities and supports their voice. Considering the context of urban education, it becomes particularly important for low-income students and students of color, who have been historically denied the power to be heard, to engage in their learning as empowered subjects through creating digital counter-narratives.

Politics of Representation

A major difference between critical media literacy (CML) and the more common media literacy practiced in the United States is the rigorous examination of the politics of representation; an analysis of how historically disenfranchised social groups are represented in media ( Funk et al., 2016 ). Many of the respondents discussed analyzing issues related to representations of different identities with their students. A high school visual arts teacher reported that through “using current events in the media, students created headline news with people of color perspective.” The majority of the responses highlighted engaging in discussions related to gender and a few responses about race. One elementary teacher noted:

My grade level did a Critical Media Literacy unit and after it was over, a week later, a student showed me a box of Chips Ahoy cookies and said that it was made to be sold to boys and girls. She compared it to a rainbow pop tarts box made for girls and a basketball cereal box made for boys that we had discussed during the CML unit.

A high school social science teacher reported:

My 11th and 12th grade Sociology class created representation boards. Each group was assigned an identity (‘white male,’ ‘Asian male,’ ‘black female,’ etc.). When each group was done, we compared the images and discussed the similarities between representations of race and gender. It really opened their eyes.

The politics of representation explores the complexities and intersections of identity markers, such as ethnicity, culture, gender, class, sexual orientation, religion, and ableism. Several candidates alluded to the intersectionality between race and gender in their responses, mostly engaging their students in discussions related to the unequal representation and socialization of gender roles. They also noted that discussing stereotypical gender roles challenged their students’ internalized notions of gender. Responses such as the following highlight the shift in their students’ perspectives about gender: An elementary teacher wrote, “We’ve had some successful discussions around gender stereotypes and I’ve heard the language change in the classroom and students be more thoughtful about others’ choices.” Another elementary teacher reported, “My students showed greater acceptance. After teaching a lesson invoking gender all my male students felt accepted to choose any color paper—the favorite was pink for the rest of the year.”

Making Critical Connections

In response to the open-ended questions, an array of items was mentioned that demonstrate critical engagement, from teaching about racism and whitewashing, to numerous examples of analyzing gender and sexism, as well as projects on environmental justice and climate change at all grade levels. Some respondents discussed their transformative practice through the way their students analyzed and created media to make critical connections between historical and current events.

A high school social science teacher stated, “I had students create videos explaining the situation in Ukraine and relating it to the Cold War. In United States history, I often had students look at political cartoons and think about current examples of imperialism and how they’re represented in media.” Similarly, another social science teacher described a memorable moment of teaching critical media literacy (CML) as: “When students could make the connection between yellow journalism in Spanish-American War and media sensationalism during the War on Terror.” An elementary school teacher wrote:

My students began to think critically about history after showing them the spoken word poem ‘History Textbooks,’ which talked about world history being American Propaganda. Through this poem, they began questioning: who gets to write history and whose stories are told? It was a really powerful lesson we returned to over and over again throughout my course.

Analyzing media texts by acknowledging their historical continuity is vital because marginalization and exploitation are historically bound. Discovering these historical connections helps teachers and students learn how dominance and ideology are perpetuated, transcending time and space. Bridging the gap between the past and the present enables students to identify the common thread of hegemony across various spheres of social life. This instructional approach of CML promotes critical thinking with a social justice emphasis.

Another topic on which respondents commented was using CML to teach about environmental issues, especially the climate crisis. This is an important area for CML, since so many media messages about climate change distort the scientific evidence and mislead the public ( Beach et al., 2017 ; Share & Beach, 2022 ). A high school science teacher reported, “My class analyzed the politics behind climate change denial and how climate change is represented in the media. It was very easy for my students to see the connection between the message and its creators.” Exploring the connection between media ownership and media messages, another high school science teacher commented that a memorable moment was having a “discussion with students about where they were getting their information about environmental issues, and talking about who owns and controls Univision.”

In addition to becoming more aware, being engaged in critical analysis and creating counternarratives, some respondents noted that their students had engaged in political, environmental, and social media activism. A high school science teacher mentioned:

My class was looking at environmental justice and one student took that information and used it for an English project she was working on and that project transformed into a petition to the city council to plant more trees as her contribution to offsetting pollution in the inner city.

Another science teacher reported about how his “students created social media campaigns to raise awareness about animals affected by climate change. Different groups created the ‘Puffin Dance’ and #peekatmypika to help their campaigns get going.” A kindergarten teacher wrote about her students creating a video with opinion posters for change they shared with their school community.

Activism can be enacted in multiple ways; some efforts are more explicit, like petitions and protests, while others are more subtle, such as creating alternative media. Teacher responses reflect their students’ activism related to social, environmental, and political issues materialized through local and issue-specific efforts.

In analyzing the responses, we found many encouraging and hopeful comments about how critical media literacy (CML) has helped teachers rethink their pedagogy and increase student engagement. However, the responses also highlight challenges for implementing CML, such as limited resources, support, and clarity about how to integrate it into the curriculum. An elementary teacher wrote about the scarcity of technology at the school and how that “makes it difficult to do anything around critical media.” From the answers to Question 7 (incorporating CML into my teaching is difficult), secondary teachers reported more difficulty teaching CML (35% VF/F) than elementary teachers (26% VF/F). This is another place where the potential for CML in the lower grades surfaced, since they seem to have less difficulty incorporating it than secondary teachers. The design of most elementary classrooms, which requires the same teacher to cover all subject matter to the same group of students throughout the day, opens the potential for integrating CML pedagogy through thematic teaching, project-based learning, or problem-posing pedagogy.

A first-year middle school social science teacher shared wanting to use more CML, but had little departmental and administrative support. An elementary teacher shared about an administrator who “is reluctant to have me teach how to be critical of all media.” Three responses focused on wanting more resources, instructional strategies, and school-appropriate material in order to be able to implement CML in their classrooms. These qualitative statements of lack of support can be seen in the quantitative responses to Question 10 in which respondents rated the statement: “I feel supported by people at my school when teaching critical media literacy”: 36% VF/F, 24% occasionally, 18% rarely, 6% never felt supported, and 17% not applicable.

The group that shared the most challenges for implementing CML consisted of five teachers who taught secondary math and science. Their qualitative responses broadly discussed the difficulty of integrating CML into their content and finding only limited application. One of these responses from a high school math teacher mentioned:

I remember how when I was in the [CML] class, it seemed all over the place. I was unable to fully find the purpose of the class and how we can use it in a math class. In a traditional math class, such as Pre-Calculus or Calculus, it was rather difficult to find ways to incorporate the idea of CML.

This same person also commented that once he began teaching statistics, he was able to find ways to integrate CML. Of the 34 math teachers who answered Question 7, 59% of them reported that incorporating CML into their teaching was difficult VF/F. This is about double the VF/F responses from the other subjects.

A high school math teacher saw the value in teaching students CML but limited its application to challenging students’ misinformation about math and who is or is not a mathematician:

Critical Media Literacy is pretty important for students, especially in an age where they’re exposed to various forms of media, a lot of which is very skewed in one way or the other, and usually takes a reductionist viewpoint of the issues it addresses. I try to use CML to help students understand the misinformation about mathematics, the nature of mathematics, and challenge stereotypes of who is or isn’t a mathematician (examples: Not all mathematicians are white or Asian, there are Latino and African/African American mathematicians, there are mathematicians from faith backgrounds, mathematics isn’t just about calculations, etc.).

Two additional respondents also acknowledged the benefits of CML but felt challenged by the additional work needed to integrate it into the curriculum. A high school science teacher shared:

When I took the Critical Media Literacy class, it felt like it was more geared towards the humanities and not necessarily for the sciences. While it would be great to come up with lessons that connect chemistry and critical media literacy, it is immensely time-consuming when I can’t find other people to brainstorm with.

Another secondary science teacher also felt CML was important but struggled to find ways to integrate it into the classroom:

It was a great shared learning space and I got a ton of inspiration from taking the class; however, it has been difficult to use CML when direct instruction does focus on the explanation of scientific concepts. That’s not to say it is impossible, it just does take one more step of planning and student buy in.

Researchers in Canada found that after teaching CML concepts and skills in a Language Arts methods course, their preservice teachers felt enthusiastic about teaching media literacy, but challenged when designing CML lessons ( Robertson & Hughes, 2011 , p. 51). Robertson and Hughes (2011) list five reasons why teaching CML was so challenging for their students: (1) when these preservice teachers were K-12 students, most did not experience CML lessons; (2) the majority of their mentor teachers did not teach CML or know much about it; (3) critical analysis practices are not easy; (4) few resources are available; and (5) some schools have little technology and technical support. These are many of the same challenges that our teachers reported.

Intent and Importance of Incorporating Critical Media Literacy

Numerous teachers wrote about how meaningful, vital, transformative, and important this class was for them. A high school science teacher shared that the critical media literacy (CML) class, “was transformative! I’m still working on ways to fully integrate what I learned, but I have had my students creating media ever since.” A middle school English teacher commented about how the CML class “gave us techniques, projects, lessons that we can incorporate in our classrooms. Teaching students how to be critical of information related through the media is highly important because student[s] gain that critical awareness necessary for a technology-based society!”

A desire to bring more CML into the classroom surfaced throughout many of the qualitative responses. When asked to indicate any additional comments, 16 out of 64 respondents (25%) expressed their intention to integrate concepts related to media literacy or CML. A high school math teacher who wrote about having students create ads to represent data in graphs stated, “I wish I could incorporate more. I’ll keep trying.” A kindergarten teacher commented, “I wish I had more time to engage my students in this topic. As I grow in experience and expertise, I incorporate it more and more. Teaching in urban areas is a challenge but I do find the ideas of the course to be valuable in the classroom.”

The data and voices of these teachers raise practical, theoretical, and policy implications for future work in supporting teachers in adopting a pedagogical approach that can ignite engagement, make learning relevant, and deepen critical thinking with media, technology, and all information. In order for this to happen, teacher education programs need to address some of the challenges and limitations highlighted in the study.

The teachers surveyed reported challenges for implementing critical media literacy (CML) such as limited access to resources, lack of support, and a struggle to understand how to integrate it into the curriculum. This was especially evident for the math and science teachers. CML courses need to help teachers in all content areas rethink the silo approach to separate subject matter instruction and recognize the ways literacy is used in all areas and how information is connected to students’ lives through issues of power, privilege, and pleasure. To help teachers integrate CML into the curriculum, it is important for them to see content and grade-level examples while also receiving ongoing support and resources.

One way to support teachers in various subject matter is to create groups or projects modeled after the Stanford History Education Group (SHEG) or the Center X professional development projects. 4 The SHEG is a research and development group that provides free online resources and lesson plans for history teachers to support students in developing historical thinking skills. In a similar way, the Center X projects provide resources, lesson ideas, and professional development to support working teachers and administrators, while also creating curriculum, providing trainings, and engaging in research. The creation of a CML project or research and development group could provide ongoing professional development for new and experienced teachers in order to sustain CML implementation and support the growth of CML as an important field of investigation.

In-service teachers in our survey reported higher rates of integration of CML, perhaps because experienced teachers have figured out issues of classroom management, lesson planning, and how to balance work and life expectations. As a result, they are better situated to build and expand their curricula and teaching practices to bring CML into their classrooms. While creating a site modeled after the SHEG or Center X projects will require a significant investment of time and money, a more immediate and economical way to provide support for preservice teachers could be through integrating CML across various teacher preparation courses, especially in methods classes. This integration would require working with teacher educators to explore the CML theoretical framework and co-construct new practices and curricula for integrating these ideas throughout different content areas.

Despite the challenges reported by our teachers, the data also suggest promising possibilities for CML. While we do not claim causality between their teaching and the CML course, the data provide a window into how our preservice and in-service teachers have supported critical engagement with the information, entertainment, and social media embedded in the lives of students.

The similarities between elementary and secondary teachers suggest that CML can be just as appropriate for lower grades as it is commonly assumed to be for older students. The work in critical literacy by Comber (2013) and Vasquez (2014) offers support for the notion that young children can engage deeply in critical thinking and social justice education. The elementary teachers in our study demonstrate these ideas through the work they have done to engage their young students with media analysis and critical media production from kindergarten on up. While some teachers reported deep levels of critical analysis more often than others, many expressed their belief in the importance of CML and their desire to teach about social justice. Vasquez (2017) reminds us that critical literacy should not be a topic to teach: “Instead it should be looked on as a lens, frame, or perspective for teaching throughout the day, across the curriculum, and perhaps beyond. What this means is that critical literacy involves having a critical perspective or way of being” (p. 8). Developing social justice educators who internalize a critical way of looking at the world and questioning systems of power is the project for which CML provides a pragmatic framework and pedagogy.

It is impressive to see the majority of teachers reporting that using CML encourages critical thinking, something more important than ever in the age of fake news and alternative facts. There is hope in the teachers’ voices as they describe the activities they have been doing with their students, the successes they have encountered, and the challenges they have struggled to overcome. The comments about their intentions to teach CML and the importance they attribute to teaching these concepts provide encouragement for teacher educators to embrace CML. More than anything, the data demonstrate the potential for teaching CML in elementary and secondary settings with preservice and in-service teachers and in all content areas, even though some are more challenging than others. The use of media and technology offers opportunities for teachers to build on students’ prior knowledge, create a bridge to connect the outside world with school learning, and provide the raw material to examine everyday experiences of power, marginalization, and resistance.

Simply integrating media into the curriculum is not enough to develop critical literacies given the changing and multiple literacies associated with new digital information and communication technologies and practices. In the contemporary moment, there is a pressing pedagogical need to navigate the increasingly consequential artificial intelligence (AI) systems that collect, collate, process, predict and disseminate information determined by algorithms. Data from the survey suggest that our teachers are teaching more with media than critically analyzing it. Further studies are needed in order to better understand how to develop teachers’ CML frameworks and support more implementation.

Preparing educators to teach CML is not easy, and unfortunately, few institutes of higher education are attempting the challenge. However, it is possible, and in fact, it can be highly rewarding. By listening to the voices of teachers who have taken a CML course, we see the potential. As one high school science teacher commented, “CML changed me, changed my teaching, continues to change my students.”

While information communication technologies are integrating into all aspects of our lives, we are also witnessing increasing divisions between the haves and have nots, out-of-control climate change, and the weaponization of information and media. In order to create a socially just democratic society and sustainable planet, we must have people who can critically read and write the word and the world ( Freire & Macedo, 1987 ). The need for CML has never been greater. A high school English teacher wrote, “there is no literacy without media literacy. There is not critical pedagogy without critical media literacy.” It is our hope that this article serves as a resource to continue exploring the potential that CML offers to transform students, schools, and society.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the following educators who helped us design and teach this critical media literacy course: Shani Byard, Peter Carlson, Steven Funk, Antero Garcia, Mark Gomez, Clifford Lee, Elexia Reyes-McGovern, and Martin Romero. We are grateful to Megan Franke for her guidance with the creation of the survey. We also appreciate the assistance of Jarod Kawasaki, Jose-Felipe Martinez, and Brandon McMillan with helping to organize the survey data.

Further Reading

• Funk, S. , Kellner, D. , & Share, J. (2016). Critical media literacy as transformative pedagogy. In M. N. Yildiz & J. Keengwe (Eds.), Handbook of research on media literacy in the digital age (pp. 1–30). IGI Global.
• Goodman, S. (2003). Teaching youth media: A critical guide to literacy, video production, and social change . Teachers College Press.
• Hammer, R. , & Kellner, D. (Eds.). (2009). Media/cultural studies: Critical approaches . Peter Lang.
• Kellner, D. , & Share, J. (2019). The critical media literacy guide: Engaging media and transforming education . Brill/Sense Publishers.
• López, A. (2021). Ecomedia literacy: Integrating ecology into media education . Routledge.
• Luke, A. , & Freebody, P. (1997). Shaping the social practices of reading. In S. Muspratt , A. Luke , & P. Freebody (Eds.), Constructing critical literacies: Teaching and learning textual practice (pp. 185–225). Allen & Unwin, Hampton Press.
• Morrell, E. , Dueñas, R. , Garcia, V. , & López, J. (2013). Critical media pedagogy: Teaching for achievement in city schools . Teachers College Press.
• Noble, S. U. (2018). Algorithms of oppression . New York University Press.
• O’Connor, A. (2006). Raymond Williams . Rowman & Littlefield.
• Share, J. (2015). Media literacy is elementary: Teaching youth to critically read and create media (2nd ed.). Peter Lang.
• Vasquez, V. (2014). Negotiating critical literacies with young children (10th anniversary ed.). Routledge.
• Beach, R. , Share, J. , & Webb, A. (2017). Teaching climate change to adolescents: Reading, writing, and making a difference . Routledge.
• Breakstone, J. , Smith, M. , Wineburg, S. , Rapaport, A. , Carle, J. , Garland, M. , & Saavedra, A. (2021). Students’ civic online reasoning: A national portrait . Educational Researcher , 50 (8), 505–515.
• Buckingham, D. (2003). Media education: Literacy, learning and contemporary culture . Polity Press.
• Butler, A. (2020). Educating media literacy: The need for teacher education in media literacy . Brill-Sense.
• California Commission on Teacher Credentialing . (2016). California teaching performance expectations .
• California Common Core State Standards . (2013). https://www.cde.ca.gov/be/st/ss/documents/finalelaccssstandards.pdf
• Carlson, P. , Share, J. , & Lee, C. (2013). Critical media literacy: Pedagogy for the digital age. Oregon English Journal , 35 (1), 50–55.
• Comber, B. (2013). Critical literacy in the early years: Emergence and sustenance in an age of accountability. In J. Larson & J. Marsh (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of early childhood literacy (pp. 587–601). SAGE.
• Dewey, J. (1963). Experience and education . Macmillan.
• Domine, V. (2011). Building 21st-century teachers: An intentional pedagogy of media literacy education. Action in Teacher Education , 33 (2), 194–205.
• Flores-Koulish, S. A. , Deal, D. , Losinger, J. , McCarthy, K. , & Rosebrugh, E. (2011). After the media literacy course: Three early childhood teachers look back. Action in Teacher Education , 33 , 127–143.
• Freire, P. (2010). Pedagogy of the oppressed ( M. B. Ramos, Trans.). The Continuum International Publishing Group.
• Freire, P. , & Macedo, D. (1987). Literacy: Reading the word & the world . Bergin & Garvey.
• Garcia, A. , Seglem, R. , & Share, J. (2013). Transforming teaching and learning through critical media literacy pedagogy. LEARNing Landscapes , 6 (2), 109–124.
• Garii, B. , & Rule, A. C. (2009). Integrating social justice with mathematics and science: An analysis of student teacher lessons. Teaching and Teacher Education: An International Journal of Research and Studies , 25 (3), 490–499.
• Gretter, S. , & Yadav, A. (2018). What do preservice teachers think about teaching media literacy? An exploratory study using the theory of planned behavior. Journal of Media Literacy Education , 10 (1), 104–123.
• Grizzle, A. , & Wilson, C. (Eds.). (2011). Media and information literacy: Curriculum for teachers . United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.
• Hall, S. (2003). The whites of their eyes: Racist ideologies and the media. In G. Dines & J. M. Humez (Eds.), Gender, race, and class in media: A text reader (2nd ed., pp. 89–93). SAGE.
• Hart, A. (Ed.). (1998). Teaching the media: International perspectives . Erlbaum.
• Hobbs, R. (2007a). Approaches to instruction and teacher education in media literacy (Research paper commissioned within the United Nations Literacy Decade). UNESCO Regional Conferences in Support of Global Literacy.
• Hobbs, R. (2007b). Reading the media: Media literacy in high school English . Teachers College Press.
• Hobbs, R. , Moen, M. , Tang, R. , & Steager, P. (2022). Measuring the implementation of media literacy instructional practices in schools: Community stakeholder perspectives . Learning, Media and Technology .
• Jhally, S. (2003). Image-based culture: Advertising and popular culture. In G. Dines & J. M. Humez (Eds.), Gender, race, and class in media: A text-reader (2nd ed.). SAGE.
• Joanou, J. P. (2017). Examining the world around us: Critical media literacy in teacher education. Multicultural Perspectives , 19 (1), 40–46.
• Kaplún, M. (1998). Una pedagogía de la comunicación . Ediciones de la Torre.
• Kellner, D. (1995). Media culture: Cultural studies, identity and politics between the modern and the postmodern . Routledge.
• Kellner, D. , & Share, J. (2007). Critical media literacy, democracy, and the reconstruction of education . In D. Macedo & S. R. Steinberg (Eds.), Media literacy: A reader (pp. 3–23). Peter Lang.
• Kincheloe, J. (2007). Critical pedagogy: Primer . Peter Lang.
• Kirwan, T. , Learmonth, J. , Sayer, M. , & Williams, R. (2003). Mapping media literacy: Media education 11–16 years in the United Kingdom . British Film Institute, Broadcasting Standards Commission, Independent Television Commission.
• Kist, W. , & Christel, M. T. (Eds.). (2022). Special issues: Critical media literacy: Bringing critical media literacy into ELA Classrooms, 2 . National Council of Teachers of English.
• Krashen, S. (1995). Bilingual education and second language acquisition theory. In D. Durkin (Ed.), Language issues: Readings for teachers (pp. 90–116). Longman.
• Kubey, R. (Ed.). (1997). Media literacy in the information age: Current perspectives . Transaction.
• Livingstone, S. (2018, May 8). Media literacy—everyone’s favourite solution to the problems of regulation [Web log post].
• Lynch, T. L. (2021). (Ed.). Special issues: Critical media literacy: Bringing lives to texts, 1 . National Council of Teachers of English.
• Meehan, J. , Ray, B. , Walker, A. , Wells, S. , & Schwarz, G. (2015). Media literacy in teacher education: A good fit across the curriculum. Journal of Media Literacy Education , 7 (2), 81–86.
• Mihailidis, P. (2008). Are we speaking the same language? Assessing the state of media literacy in U.S. higher education. Studies in Media & Information Literacy Education , 8 (4), 1–14.
• Moore, D. C. , & Bonilla, E. (2014). Media literacy education & the common core state standards: NAMLE an educator’s guide . National Association for Media Literacy Education.
• National Council of Teachers of English . (2022, April 9). Media Education in English Language Arts .
• Pegurer Caprino, M. , & Martínez-Cerdá, J. (2016). Media literacy in Brazil: Experiences and models of non-formal education. Comunicar , 24 (49), 39–48.
• Pérez-Tornero, J. M. , & Tayie, S. (2012). Introduction. Teacher training in media education: Curriculum and international experiences . Comunicar , 20 (39), 10–14.
• Prinsloo, J. , & Criticos, C. (Eds.). (1991). Media matters in South Africa . Media Resource Centre.
• Ranieri, M. , & Bruni, I. (2018). Promoting digital and media competencies of pre- and in-service teachers: Research findings of a project from six European countries. Journal of e-Learning and Knowledge Society , 14 (2), 111–125.
• Rideout, V. , Lauricella, A. , & Wartella, E. (2011). Children, media, and race: Media use among white, black, hispanic, and Asian American children . Center on Media and Human Development School of Communication, Northwestern University.
• Robertson, L. , & Hughes, J. M. (2011). Investigating pre-service teachers’ understandings of critical media literacy. Language & Literacy , 13 (2), 37–53.
• Rogow, F. (2018, August 1). How to adjust your “brights” to see through the fog of “fake” news [Web log post]
• Schwarz, G. (2001). Literacy expanded: The role of media literacy in teacher education. Teacher Education Quarterly , 28 (2), 111–119.
• Share, J. , & Beach, R. (2022). Critical media literacy analysis and production for systems thinking about climate change . The Journal of Media Literacy: Research Symposium Issue.
• Share, J. , & Gambino, A. (2022). A framework, disposition, and pedagogy for teaching critical media literacy. In W. Kist & M. T. Christel (Eds.), special issues: Critical media literacy, volume 2 : Bringing critical media literacy into ELA classrooms (pp. 11–17). National Council of Teachers of English.
• Tiede, J. , Grafe, S. , & Hobbs, R. (2015). Pedagogical media competencies of preservice teachers in Germany and the United States: A comparative analysis of theory and practice. Peabody Journal of Education , 90 (4), 533–545.
• Trust, T. , Maloy, R. , Butler, A. & Goodman, L. (2022). Critical media literacy in teacher education: Discerning truth amidst a crisis of misinformation and disinformation. Journal of Technology and Teacher Education , 30 (2), 167–176.
• Vasquez, V. M. (2017). Curriculum and pedagogy, educational purposes and ideals, education theories and philosophies . In G. W. Noblit (Ed.), Oxford research encyclopedia of education . Oxford University Press.
• Vogels, E. , Gelles-Watnick, R. , & Massarat, N. (2022). Teens, social media & technology 2018 . Pew Research Center.
• Vosoughi, S. , Roy, D. , & Aral, S. (2018). The spread of true and false news online. Science , 359 (6380), 1146–1151.
• Wilson, C. (2012). Media and information literacy: Pedagogy and possibilities . Comunicar , 20 (39), 15–22.
• Wilson, C. , & Duncan, B. (2009). Implementing mandates in media education: The Ontario experience. Comunicar , 32 (16), 127–140.

1. The UNESCO Media and Information Literacy Curriculum can be found at the following location.

2. These can be found at the Center for Media Literacy website .

3. See The UCLA Library Critical Media Literacy Research Guide .

4. The Stanford History Education Group (SHEG) and the Center X site is at UCLA CENTER X PREPARES & SUPPORTS EDUCATORS .

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Media education in the ict era: theoretical structure for innovative teaching styles.

1. Introduction

2. materials and methods, 3.1. learning styles in the classroom: the media education model.

• Technological advances . The spread of digitization in all areas of society highlights the importance of assessing the reliability of information. Advances in artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, datafication, algorithms, augmented, extended and virtual reality, robotization, etc., among many others, present new questions for media education.
• Media use habits are changing . The media is used very differently today than in the past. The changes are related to social media, gaming, gamification and e-sports, to mention a few. It is also important to be aware of the changes in media markets, such as the concentration and international character of operators.
• Media literacy requirements are changing . In addition to different kinds of media literacy, other types of literacy should also be taken into account in media education: the traditional ability to read and write text, critical literacy, digital literacy, data literacy, visual literacy and multiliteracy.
• Competence requirements for media educators will change . Trends in media education concern digital and lifelong learning, peer learning, the broadening of the target groups of media education to cover all age groups, and the diversification of terminology
• Changes in society and culture affect media education . Media culture is internationalizing, which means that it is increasingly important to consider globalization in media education. The ageing of the population and multiculturality affect the target groups and topics of media culture.
• Media education lacks resources . Lack of resources is frequent, which conditions its application (organization of activities, hiring personnel, allocating working hours, purchasing of equipment and materials, competence development, etc.). This, in turn, contributes to the fragmentation of the field.
• Collaboration, coordination and networks in media education are insufficient . Better collaboration, coordination and networking would improve the efficiency of the work, develop the activity, help take into account the different perspectives of media education.
• There are shortcomings in competences related to media education . The field of media education is broad in terms of topics and perspectives. Shortcomings in competences may impact certain themes, topics or perspectives of media education and limit its coverage even from the perspective of target groups.
• Media education is fragmented . Media education cannot be limited to apply to specified target groups only.
• Media education is not systematic enough . In order to be pervasive and consistently developing, media education must be systematic.
• Changes in society and media culture challenge media education . Inequality between people, social exclusion, climate change, polarization, racism and discrimination are social problems that require awareness in media education.
• Media education is not known or valued enough . Awareness of media education still needs to be improved. Media education as a term may not be familiar or it may be understood too narrowly.

3.2. Critical Analysis of (and with) the Media in Education

3.3. integrating ict into education through new teaching styles, 4. discussion, 5. conclusions.

• Today the digital paradigm, of hands on ICTs, has transformed the foundations of society and, consequently, of education.
• The convergence between technologies and the media has led to the adoption of strategies and forms of ICT similar to traditional media, coinciding in their objectives of social, cultural, economic, political influence, etc.
• An analysis of this reality, which has such an impact on the lives of citizens, needs to be carried out in schools. ICT cannot be considered exclusively as a didactic resource. They must be, above all, an object of study.
• Today, any study with ICT must be considered within the parameters of media education, in the classic sense of the term.
• Media education encompassing all ICTs must be offered at all educational levels, naturally adapted to the characteristics and objectives of each stage. Its development would help to tackle problems such as excessive consumerism, addictions, cyber-bullying, processes of disinformation and fake news, etc.
• In the context of a media education of a holistic nature-through an approach that considers all problems as interdependent-students will be able to understand the role and importance of ICT in our society but also to know the influence of its sophisticated messages.
• One of the most effective means of integrating ICT into the curriculum, in addition to specific educational policies, would be teacher training and, in general, the transformation of teaching styles, which should be adapted to the new social reality in which we live.
• Teaching styles must be based on the autonomy of teachers to carry out their professional work through dialogue, knowledge of the classroom and its students, innovative methodologies, etc., seeking to create people who are more reflective of the world around them and the information they receive.
• The problem, in essence, is not didactic, but educational. Today, ICTs are not management tools as they were in their origins but effective means of communication at the service of multiple interests (and in which citizens are, above all, clients, consumers, voters).
• In classroom work, ICT cannot be integrated solely as a teaching medium. Teachers must be trained not only to use them instrumentally, but to analyze them like any other element of our world that must be known in order to be taught. This is how they would really be integrated into the teaching styles that are required today and with the guarantee that they will serve both training and education.

Conflicts of Interest

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Gómez-Galán, J. Media Education in the ICT Era: Theoretical Structure for Innovative Teaching Styles. Information 2020 , 11 , 276. https://doi.org/10.3390/info11050276

Gómez-Galán J. Media Education in the ICT Era: Theoretical Structure for Innovative Teaching Styles. Information . 2020; 11(5):276. https://doi.org/10.3390/info11050276

Gómez-Galán, José. 2020. "Media Education in the ICT Era: Theoretical Structure for Innovative Teaching Styles" Information 11, no. 5: 276. https://doi.org/10.3390/info11050276

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Social Media in the Classroom: Opportunities, Challenges & Recommendations

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Opportunities & Challenges with Social Media

Recommendations for using social media in the classroom, social media faq.

The EDUCAUSE Center for Analysis and Research (ECAR) conducts an annual survey of over 250 institutions of higher education, including the University of Washington, examining the technology experiences of undergraduates and faculty. A recent ECAR survey included questions exploring faculty and student perceptions of and experiences with social media as an academic resource. While the ECAR findings raise more questions than they answer, there is significant evidence that UW faculty and students are interested in the potential utility of social media as a learning tool. Read on for to learn about opportunities and challenges with social media in the classroom as well as recommendations, authored in consultation with the University Registrar, for incorporating the use of social media in academic work.

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Considering both the potential opportunities and challenges in using social media as an educational tool, UW instructors should take steps to ensure successful adoption in the classroom. Fortunately, best practices and guidelines can help set appropriate expectations for using social media in teaching and learning. These recommendations, created in consultation with the University Registrar, address actions that can be taken by instructors.

What is social media?

Social media is a communication tool that allows users to interact with, and contribute to, content online. It includes popular online social networks such as Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook, with new platforms emerging. Although social media has a large presence in news and entertainment, when used in the learning setting for educational purposes it has the potential to facilitate communication, augmenting the student experience and improving outcomes, by:

• Encouraging interaction and engagement among students
• Nurturing a student-centric learning setting
• Extending the learning environment beyond the classroom
• Facilitating the flow of information between students, faculty, and the campus community

Why would I use social media in my teaching?

Current research suggests that in the higher education setting, social media may be used to improve communication between students, instructors, and the surrounding campus community. While many different types of communication tools are available in the learning setting, the advantage of using popular social media platforms is that most students arrive to campus as fluent users of these virtual tools. Whether or not instructors adopt social media as an education tool, chances are their students already have created a class-specific Facebook group, use Twitter to share course information, or use another social media platform to communicate with other students outside of class.

Do I need to be concerned about privacy?

It’s best to view anything posted to social media as publicly available information, and treat content accordingly. While many social media platforms, such as Facebook, provide users with the ability to filter who is able to see their content, it is difficult to ensure privacy. Once posted, social media content is held by a third party, and the user more or less relinquishes ownership in exchange for free storage.

What can I do to protect my privacy?

Instructors and students should familiarize themselves with social media platform-specific privacy settings, and stay up-to-date with them. Many social media platforms enable the user to determine how widely their content is shared, restricting access to a designated group or making content publicly accessible. While these settings offer some degree of protection, there’s no guarantee that anything posted to a social media platform is actually private, so best practice is to treat any posts as public.

Some students and instructors might prefer to compartmentalize their online social and academic lives by creating separate accounts for coursework. Over Twitter for example, instructors can offer students access to a shared class account, using a handle or username associated with the course itself, e.g. @Bio101. In this case, students would all have access to the same account, utilizing this account to contribute to discussion and post content. Over Facebook, instructors and students may opt to create a group or page specific for class. While these social media groups can be set to “private” or “secret,” enabling instructors and students to control who has access to them, instructors should continue to collaborate with their colleagues, TAs, and students for ideas on preserving privacy.

What should I do to protect student privacy?

In addition to the above recommendations, instructors need to be mindful of what type of content they post to and about their students. Posts should not include any personal data about students, including images, recordings, or any documentation related to a student’s performance in class.

Protecting student privacy also means that instructors model positive social media practices and privacy considerations in class. When using social media for a class-related activity, instructors should talk to their students about social media and privacy, and encourage students to keep themselves up-to-date with changing privacy policies.

How should I communicate how social media will be used in the classroom, to my students?

However you choose to communicate expectations about how social media will be used in the course, it is essential to make students aware of these expectations as early as possible, equipping students with the information they need to make informed choices about their course schedule. Instructors may opt to clarify expectations in the course description, so students are aware even before enrollment. Such expectations can also be detailed in an accessible course Canvas page, over MyPlan, or in course marketing materials. Students should have a clear idea about how social media is used, if it is required, and what, if any, accommodations or alternative assignments are available.

What are some ways I can use social media in my courses?

One way to begin integrating social media into the classroom is to ask other instructors, TAs or students what they are doing. In addition to these sources, here are some ideas for ways instructors can use social media as a teaching and learning tool:

• Implementing Live Twitter Chat Discussion Sessions
• Teaching with Twitter: Podcast and getting started
• How Social Media Can Help Students Study
• Collaborative Online Projects: Wikis
• Keeping remote collect students connected: Virtual student unions provide communities for online learners
• Social Media: A tool to increase college students’ engagement and success
• Facebook groups as LMS
• How-to use social media platforms to create meaningful learning assignments
• Virtual office hours
• The impact of social media on the dissemination of research: results of an experiment

Social Media Education: Barriers and Critical Issues

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• Melani Au 17 ,
• Jeanne Lam 17 &
• Radar Chan 17  

Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 494))

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As one of the highest smartphone penetration regions in the globe, Hong Kong has more than 12 million mobile users are capable to access mobile data services. People spend time on their mobile devices for information, entertainment as well as communication. With the advancement of information, communication and technology (ICT) especially in mobile technology, various online social media tools, e.g. Facebook, WhatsApp, rapidly developed in the past decade. The use of these tools is so overwhelming which transformed people’s way of communication. Discussions on using social media in education are getting keen. However, regardless of the popularity of social media in Hong Kong, the effectiveness of using existing social media tools to facilitate teaching and learning is not noticeable. This paper illustrates the barriers behind this phenomenon in Hong Kong. Factors from technological perspective, institutional perspective and users’ perspective are critically discussed. It is believed that with optimal monitoring, motivation and planning, social media can be beneficial to both institutions, teachers and students in the long run.

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Centre for Cyber Learning, HKU SPACE, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China

Melani Au, Jeanne Lam & Radar Chan

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Kam Cheong Li

Department of Mathematics and Information Technology, The Hong Kong Institute of Education, Hong Kong

Tak-Lam Wong

The Open University of Hong Kong, Good Shepherd Street, Homantin, Kowloon, Hong Kong

Simon K. S. Cheung

School of Professional and Continuing Education, The Univeristy of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Caritas Institute of Higher Education, 18 Chui Ling Road, Hong Kong

Kwan Keung Ng

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Au, M., Lam, J., Chan, R. (2015). Social Media Education: Barriers and Critical Issues. In: Li, K.C., Wong, TL., Cheung, S.K.S., Lam, J., Ng, K.K. (eds) Technology in Education. Transforming Educational Practices with Technology. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 494. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-46158-7_20

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Challenge for Media Education

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The Challenge for Media Education promotes Media and Information Literacy (MIL) in formal education institutions through the identification of best learning practices, and the transfer of tools, resources, materials and concrete learning experiences specifically created to address MIL-related issues in their classrooms.

• Introduction
• Teacher training
• Extra learning resources
• Selection of learning experiences

The challenge has identified the best MIL-related experiences undertaken in schools from Argentina, Catalonia, Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Portugal and will train other teachers from these communities in the design of learning experiences around these topics, building on the previously selected best practices.

To achieve that, more than 50 experiences in integrating MIL in these communities’ classrooms were preselected in collaboration with ENACOM CAC, CRC, IFT, CONCORTV y ERC as well as other stakeholders from the educational ecosystem and the public sector. The selected six will be presented by their authors during the MWC Barcelona 2023.

The second part of the challenge will build on these identified practices to train teachers in the design and implementation of innovative learning experiences that have MIL at their core.

It is necessary to provide students with resources and tools so they can learn how to compare and contrast information, assess mass media, recognize evidence, identify biases and politicized statements, distinguish between false and truthful information, and, also responsibly create and share their own content.

What is a learning experience?

A learning experience is a proposal developed along a series of sessions (such as a project, an itinirary of activities, a didactic unit…) with the aim of achieving real, significant, situated learning, and where active/agile methodologies, challenge students facing them with problems and challenges that enhance their competencies, while placing them at the core of their own learning process.

Topics of the learning experiences

Misinformation: Education for the critical consumption of information

Active and responsible digital citizenship.

Digital identity and online security

Selected learning experiences at the MCW 2023 in Barcelona

Selected teachers will have the opportunity to present their teaching proposal at a special event in Barcelona within the framework of the MWC 2023, the most important technology-related event worldwide, which is held in Barcelona from February 27 to March 2 in 2023.

Organizing Institutions

This initiative has been developed by mSchools in collaboration with the following audiovisual regulatory authorities: The Consell de l’Audiovisual de Catalunya (CAC) , the Comisión de Regulación de Comunicaciones (CRC) from Colombia, the Consejo Consultivo de Radio y Televisión (CONCORTV) from Peru, the Ente Nacional de Comunicaciones (ENACOM) from Argentina, the Entidade Reguladora para a Comunicação Social (ERC) from Portugal and the Instituto Federal de Telecomunicaciones (IFT) from Mexico.

Phase 2: objectives

The main purpose of this second stage of the challenge is focused on training teachers from the 6 educational communities who participated in this initiative in the  design and implementation of a learning experience related to Media and Information Literacy.

Structure and methodology

The design of the learning experiences will be divided into three stages:

• Inspiration phase
• Ideation phase
• Implementation phase

The methodologies that will be used in this process will be:

• Design thinking
• Collaborative learning
• Gamification
• Learning by doing

Who can participate?

Teachers that will undertake the stage 2 training have been selected by the challenge’s regional partners.

Learning resources to work on MIL projects

Communication education program of the Audiovisual Council of Catalonia

https://www.educac.cat

Educational project to combat misinformation

Learn to Check

https://www.learntocheck.org/

NGO that fights against fake news and manipulation on the internet.

https://www.desfake.cat/

NGO that promotes critical thinking and reflexive use of tech

Faro Digital

https://www.farodigital.org/

Selected classroom experiences

Discover the selection of educational proposals about mil.

Coming soon

Get (mis)informed: a proposal to manage information

This experience aims at providing students with the necessary strategies and tools to manage the avalanche of information they face every day. For this purpose, a new “class” called “Get (mis)informed” was created using material from their TikToks.

Informing the Youth: a school podcast

“Informing the Youth” is an educational experience in which secondary students work in communicational media to make a podcast that reflects their impressions and criticism on the topic: Do radio contents reflect society?.

Animation as a strategy for interculturality

Students create didactic content collectively through the stop-motion technique to spread ancestral knowledge and contribute to building more inclusive societies. At the same time, the community learns about ICTs and technological advances.

The critical construction of news and the risks of naïve percepctions

A pedagogical proposal based on Audiovisual Literacy in which students become prosumers (producers and consumers of content) and critical protagonists of media discourses. They learn to interpret information and create the pre-production / production stages of a news show using ICT tools and assuming the necessary roles.

A Radio with Andean children

Classroom learning projects that link Quechua children with community members, to produce programs broadcasted by regional radio stations, showcasing their life, cosmovision, heart, and living heritage.

Onlife.com@BEMM

The experience involved implementing didactic itineraries of Media and Information Literacy at school and with the families, which focused on collaborative creation and production of multi-modal content, strengthened by the Always ALERT! campaign.

You may be interested in...

How to select information sources and avoid fake news

Educating for critical thinking in social media

Cognitive biases, why do we swallow the misinformation bait?

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The Challenges of Media Education in the Digital Era

• Ravi Birla GJUS&T, Hisar
• Sunaina Assistant Professor, Departments of Mass Communication, GJUS&T, Hisar

The advent of the digital era has ushered in a transformative landscape in the field of media, necessitating a reevaluation of media education strategies. This study explores the multifaceted challenges facing media education in the digital age, with a focus on the evolving media landscape, technology integration, pedagogical approaches, and the role of educators. In today’s digitally connected world, the media ecosystem has become more complex and dynamic than ever before. The proliferation of social media platforms, online news sources, and user-generated content has fundamentally altered the way information is produced, disseminated, and consumed. Consequently, media education faces the challenge of keeping pace with the rapid evolution of digital media, ensuring that students are equipped with the critical thinking and media literacy skills necessary to navigate this ever-changing landscape. Another key challenge lies in the integration of technology within media education. While digital tools offer unprecedented opportunities for creativity and engagement, they also pose challenges related to accessibility, the digital divide, and the need for educators to continuously update their technological skills. Finding the right balance between traditional and digital media instruction is essential for effective pedagogy. Pedagogical approaches in media education must evolve to address the changing needs of students in the digital era. Educators must adapt their methods to foster critical thinking, digital literacy, and media ethics. Encouraging students to become discerning media consumers and responsible content creators is paramount to their success in the digital age. Furthermore, educators themselves face the challenge of professional development to stay abreast of emerging trends, technologies, and best practices in media education. Continuous learning and collaboration with industry professionals are essential to equip educators with the knowledge and skills needed to guide students effectively. The challenges of media education in the digital era are manifold, encompassing the dynamic nature of the media landscape, technology integration, evolving pedagogical approaches, and the ongoing development of educators themselves. Addressing these challenges requires a concerted effort from educational institutions, policymakers, and industry stakeholders to ensure that media education remains relevant, effective, and capable of preparing students for the complexities of the digital age.

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Part of a Blog Series from the Emerging Technologies Committee Leveraging Technology for Improving School Wellness and Safety

Students’ use of social media has increased significantly, reaching nearly half of their day spent on these platforms. While many teachers use social media in the classroom, there are still concerns regarding its appropriate use inside and outside the classroom. To ensure proper usage, digital citizenship training can be implemented, such as partnering with Common Sense Education or developing in-house training programs. CoSN also has great resources, including Social Media & ED and Creating Effective Responsible Use Policies for Schools .

In recent years, schools have received an unprecedented amount of negative and positive comments on social media. One strategy that schools can use to focus attention on the positive is to think about their branding.  Positive school branding promotes the achievements and work of teachers, students, and administrators. Schools can run campaigns, post updates, create video series to showcase their successes, and post them on various social media sites. Two examples of positive school branding that came up through interviews with school leaders are:

• Gwinnett County Public Schools’ community relations department runs campaigns to highlight best practices. Their current campaign SHINE involves schools and district offices nominating students and staff members to highlight their work. Each week they have a different featured person.

Positive school branding helps manage negative interactions and creates community within schools and school districts. To manage negative interactions, schools can dispel misinformation through social media and work with social media companies to remove inappropriate content. In a groundbreaking collaboration, follow NSPRA, CoSN, and other educational partners as they make headway on The Critical Need for Verification and Dedicated Reporting Processes for Schools . https://www.nspra.org/Schools-and-Social-Media

• Another solution for managing negative interactions is to use a unified internal communications system with social media-like qualities, like Bartholomew Consolidated School Corporation’s system. Their system eliminates negative interactions by protecting the network from non-school members and simplifies communication for parents. One benefit of a system like this is that parents only need one login to access information from everyone in the school.
• All users  (teachers, parents, administrators) are opted in automatically.
• Communications can be translated into over 100 languages
• It builds a true sense of community since parents, teachers, and administrators can see what is happening at all levels of the school on one platform.

In conclusion, social media in K-12 education presents both challenges and opportunities. By implementing digital citizenship training, utilizing social media for positive branding and messaging, and using a unified system for internal communications, schools can overcome these challenges and fully reap the benefits of social media in the classroom and in their districts.

Published on:  February 8, 2023

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A realistic way to protect kids from social media? Find a middle ground

Larissa May, of HalfTheStory, is photographed in New York’s Madison Square Park, Tuesday, June 4, 2024. The site works with young people to build better relationships with technology, on their own terms, starting in middle school even before some kids have a device. To May, abstinence is not the answer to teens’ problems with social media. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

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Ahmed Othman isn’t on TikTok and doesn’t want to be.

He and his younger sister got iPhones when they were in eighth and seventh grade respectively, but with no social media, just iMessage. Their parents, who are both computer scientists, spent the next year teaching them about social media, bombarding them with studies about its effects on teen mental health.

“They really tried to emphasize social media is a tool, but can also be like your worst enemy if you so make it,” Othman said.

Now 17, Othman credits his parents’ deep involvement for what he calls a “healthy relationship” with his phone. That includes staying away from TikTok.

“The algorithm is so potent that I feel like, you know, TikTok might not benefit me,” he said.

Othman, who’s originally from Libya and lives in Massachusetts, is an outlier among his peers, nearly two-thirds of whom are on TikTok either with or without their parents’ permission, according to the Pew Research Center.

Othman’s parents took a middle ground approach that a growing number of experts say is the most realistic and effective way of teaching children about social media: Rather than an outright ban or allowing free reign, they recommend a slow, deliberate onboarding that gives children the tools and information they need to navigate a world in which places like TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat are almost impossible to escape.

“You cannot just expect that the kids will jump into the world of social media, learn how to swim on their own,” said Natalie Bazarova, a professor of communications and director of the Cornell Social Media Lab. “They need to have instruction. They need to have practice on how to behave on social media. They need to have understanding of risks and opportunities. And they also need to learn that in a way that is age appropriate.”

FEW GUARDRAILS

The harms to children from social media have been well-documented in the two decades since Facebook’s launch ushered in a new era in how the world communicates. Kids who spend more time on social media, especially when they are tweens or young teenagers, are more likely to experience depression and anxiety, according to multiple studies — though it is not yet clear if there is a causal relationship.

Many are exposed to content that is not appropriate for their age, including pornography and violence. They also face bullying, sexual harassment and unwanted advances from their peers as well as adult strangers. Because their brains are not fully developed, teenagers are also more affected by social comparisons than adults, so even happy posts from friends could send them into a negative spiral.

Lawmakers have taken notice and have held multiple congressional hearings — most recently in January — on child online safety. Still, the last federal law aimed at protecting children online was enacted in 1998, six years before Facebook’s founding.

Last May, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued a warning saying there is not enough evidence to show that social media is safe for kids and urged policymakers to address the harms of social media the same way they regulate things like car seats, baby formula, medication and other products children use. Parents, he stressed, can’t do it all, although some — like Othman’s — try.

Othman at first wanted a phone “with everything on it, no restrictions.”

“But like now, after the years passed, I really do understand and appreciate what they did,” he said.

WHEN IT’S NOT ENOUGH

Of course, the Othmans’ approach may not work for every family. Most parents are not computer scientists, and many don’t have the time or expertise to create a crash-course on social media for their children.

But even when parents are vigilant, that’s still no guarantee their children won’t fall prey to social media’s traps.

Neveen Radwan thought she did everything right when she gave her children phones: putting restrictions on their accounts, having access to their passwords, taking away their phones at night, setting everything to private.

“I made sure that everything was very, very, you know, airtight,” said Radwan, who worked in information technology for 20 years.

Her daughter didn’t get a phone until she was 13. She started using social media in the eighth grade. When she was 16, she was diagnosed with anorexia.

“We were right in the beginning of (the COVID lockdowns) and it progressed very quickly because we were at home and she was on social media quite a bit at the time,” Radwan recalled.

An avid athlete, the teen started looking for workouts and ways to stay healthy on Instagram. Soon, though, the algorithm began showing her social media challenges like “how to stay under 500 calories a day” and “if you want to stay skinny, you need to be able to fit in a baby swing.” Within two or three months, Radwan said her daughter was in the hospital.

Today, Radwan speaks about the harms of social media to teens and has joined a lawsuit against Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta Platforms Inc. that seeks to hold the tech giant accountable for the harms its platforms have caused to children and teens. Her daughter has recovered and is attending college.

ARE SCHOOLS THE ANSWER?

While parents are definitely part of the equation, most of the the teens and experts interviewed by The Associated Press pointed to schools as the key place where all children can learn about “digital citizenship,” the umbrella term that includes news media literacy, cyberbullying, social media balance and now even artificial intelligence literacy.

“We have sex education. We don’t have things about like online safety,” said Bao Le, a 18-year-old freshman at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. “And a lot of kids are dying of suicide, you know, text sextortion. So I think it’s really important the school also teaches this.”

But while some schools offer digital literacy or online safety programs, these are still few and far between. Teachers already face pressure to teach the regular curriculum while also dealing with staffing shortages and funding issues. Not only that, but kids are often encouraged to be on social media if they want to participate in extracurricular activities and other school programs.

Some schools opt to ban phones altogether , but just as with parental bans, kids often find a way. For instance, at schools that collect the gadgets from kids in the morning, students say they get around it by turning in fake phones. To get around parental bans, they set up social media accounts on friends’ phones, computers or buy burner phones to keep using after they have turned in their official phone.

“Hope is not a strategy. And pretending that (social media) doesn’t exist is also not a strategy, because we have to deal with real life,” said Merve Lapus, vice president of education outreach at the nonprofit Common Sense Media, whose digital citizenship curriculum is used in more than 90,000 schools in the U.S. “Our kids are being exposed to it in some shape or form. They’re hearing about it with their friends. The pressure to feel connected has not changed. I mean, these are all pressures we felt as kids.”

To really connect with kids, he said, it’s best to get deeper into the pressures they face when it comes to social media, and validate that those are real pressures.

“I think that’s one of the challenges right now, is that it becomes the center of attention only when it’s problematic,” Lapus said. “And so we frame these tools as only problematic tools very easily, very quickly, and our kids will say, you just don’t get it, I can’t talk to you about these things because you don’t understand.”

NONPROFITS STEP UP

Over the past decade or so, nonprofits and advocacy groups — many run by young people who emerged from their own struggles with social media — have popped up to offer help.

Larissa May stumbled on to social media a decade ago when she was in high school “without any roadmap” on its dangers or how to use it. May said she was dealing with depression and anxiety that social media exacerbated. In college, she became “obsessed” with social media and digital marketing, running a fashion blog where she was posting on every day.

“I got to a point where I was spending 12-plus hours a day on my phone in my room, more focused on my digital identity than the world around me, my mental health, my physical health, my sleep,” May recalled. She almost took her own life.

The turning point came when May started going to a psychiatrist almost every day, with clear instructions of what she needed to do: Take antidepressants, start moving her body sleep, and start socializing.

“However, I was spending all of my day on my phone, which they never addressed, and being on my phone prevented me from doing all of those things,” May said. “And it wasn’t until one day where I had this, you know, midnight thought of, why can I not heal? And it was because I hadn’t healed my relationship with technology.”

So, she shut down her fashion blog and started HalfTheStory in 2015, with the intent of gathering stories from young people such as Othman to understand how social media was affecting them.

“And what I found out was that I wasn’t alone in my struggle,” she said.

Today, HalfTheStory works with young people to build better relationships with technology, on their own terms, starting in middle school even before some kids have a device.

To May, abstinence is not the answer to teens’ problems with social media.

“What I learn from every single one of our teens is that they wish their parents had more boundaries for them,” she said. “And I think that parents feel afraid because honestly, a lot of violence and conflict erupts around devices.”

Social Media in Education: 13 Ideas for the Classroom

Since gaining widespread popularity in the early 2010s, social media has been a controversial topic when it comes to using it for education. However, many educators are now embracing social media as a teaching tool with a wide array of benefits for learning.

From parent-teacher communications to organizing group projects to developing digital literacy, social media has the potential to enhance the curriculum at any grade level — provided it is used responsibly. Here, we’ll explore eight platforms and five possible uses for social media in the classroom, plus some best practices for keeping it a safe and enjoyable experience for everyone.

How Social Media is Reshaping Education

As around 60% of the world’s population knows, social media can be an effective way to share news, find communities, build social networks and disseminate information instantly to a broad audience. According to Pew Research, 95% of American teens use at least one social media platform — so it makes sense that educators would seek to engage their students using technology they already interact with daily.

Teachers can use social media to organize group projects, communicate with students outside of class, share resources, and much more. Social media also has the potential to connect schools to the wider community for purposes including:

• Sharing school news
• Promoting school events
• Holding virtual town hall meetings
• Advertising fundraising initiatives
• Sending out emergency alerts

Since 90% of U.S. adults are also on social media (and many likely access it on their phones ), it is an incredibly useful medium for sending real-time communications to parents and guardians of school-aged children.

Pros & Cons of Social Media for Students

Of course, a tool as powerful as social media requires its users to exercise great responsibility to maintain a respectful, safe online environment. Teachers and students should be clear on both the benefits and risks before using these tools for educational purposes.

Benefits of social media in the classroom:

• Real-time communications can increase student engagement, collaboration, communication and overall participation.
• Many students may find it easier to participate in online discussions than in the classroom.
• Students can easily ask each other or their teacher questions about assignments outside of class.
• Students and teachers can quickly share helpful resources at any time.
• Teachers can easily share announcements with the entire class.
• Social media can provide a contingency plan for last-minute remote learning scenarios .
• Students can organize school events with each other or with the help of a teacher.
• Teachers can augment an online-only class by establishing a social media page or account strictly for building community.
• Students can practice using social platforms responsibly, including maintaining a respectful online discourse.
• Parents can stay informed of school news via a convenient, easily accessible platform.
• Teachers can communicate directly with parents as needed, especially if parents cannot attend an in-person meeting.
• Educators can build and enhance their own tech literacy skills to add to their portfolios.
• Most, if not all, social media platforms are free.

Downsides of using social media in the classroom:

• Social media can be a major distraction in class, especially if students are accessing their personal accounts independently. Private side conversations, off-topic activities and mindless scrolling can all happen when students are granted in-class internet access.
• If students primarily use social platforms to participate in class discussions, they can miss out on practicing face-to-face conversations and respectful in-person discourse.
• Some students may see social media assignments as an opportunity to cyberbully their classmates , so it’s critical that teachers set firm ground rules about responsible social media use.
• There is always a risk of a group member posting inappropriate content or language, since it is difficult to manage how students use social media platforms independently. Teachers must be responsible and attentive administrators to prevent and address inappropriate behavior.

8 Ways Teachers Can Use Social Media in the Classroom

While fewer school-aged young people are using Facebook today (about 32%, Pew finds), it can still be a useful tool for maintaining an online community, posting updates, sharing links and asking questions. Facebook can be used to organize specific projects, communicate with classes, form student clubs, plan events and more. The instant group chat function can facilitate real-time discussions, and Facebook Live enables teachers to lead virtual lessons, stream lectures and hold Q&A sessions. As administrators, teachers can set Facebook groups to private or invite-only to maintain a safe space for students.

Twitter can serve as more of a bite-sized message board where teachers can post short project updates, announcements, links to helpful resources or answer students’ questions. The platform can also serve as the basis for lessons in using concise language , since each post is limited to 280 characters — a valuable skill for both essay writing and future professional communications. Teachers can create dedicated handles or hashtags for each of their classes and invite both students and their guardians to follow along.

Blog posts provide another way for students to practice their essay writing, an increasingly important skill for higher grade levels. Instead of maintaining physical reading journals, students can submit weekly blog posts with their reflections and responses to assigned readings. Teachers can also use blogs to communicate project instructions during remote learning days or vacations and even write up a semester report for parents and guardians to review.

This is an excellent tool for sharing visual resources like infographics, artistic inspiration, tutorials or examples of finished projects. Many teachers use Pinterest to collect and organize their own lesson ideas, so creating a board (or several) where students can pin their own resources encourages collaboration and learning ownership. While students of all ages respond well to visuals, Pinterest may be particularly popular with younger students who are still practicing their reading skills.

Another great visual platform, Instagram can be useful for teachers to share updates, for administrators to post announcements and for students to post project results or follow accounts that are relevant to course content. Teachers can create class-specific accounts where they post assignments, instructions, resources, updates, and more.

This online community provides a space for anyone to unite around any interest imaginable — from fitness to classic film trivia to poetry. Reddit has a bit of an “anything goes” reputation for its lax posting guidelines, but moderators are typically on hand to mitigate any inappropriate or improper use of the platform. There’s a subreddit for every academic subject, so students can peruse threads for project research (while still verifying any information therein) and even post their own questions for the Reddit community to discuss.

Similar to Reddit, YouTube hosts video resources on any topic under the sun. Teachers can easily share educational videos, tutorials and any other type of video content. YouTube is also a great hosting platform for video projects, where students can upload finished videos for their teachers, classmates and guardians to watch on a private class channel.

This professional networking platform is mostly used by people in the post-school workforce, so high school students may not even be aware of it yet. However, whether they decide to attend college or not, learning how to market their skills and build a professional network can help students navigate the job market after graduation. LinkedIn is also a great place to find articles and other resources to help young professionals build their industry knowledge and skills.

5 Social Media Lesson Ideas to Try

The ideas in this section are merely suggestions for unique ways to use social media in the classroom — but the internet is your and your students’ playground! Use these ideas as jumping-off points for your own social media-based lessons.

• Use blogs to chart learning progress. Blogs can be useful tools for language learning, whether that’s practicing how to craft a five-paragraph essay or improving one’s French writing skills. But this long-form writing platform can also be used to track students’ progress in any subject. For example, have chemistry students write biweekly posts summarizing everything they’ve learned in class, and ask them to revisit and write about certain topics once a semester to practice knowledge retrieval. These posts can also serve as test prep and reminders of any concepts students may need to review.
• Use Instagram or TikTok for visual responses. Most social media platforms popular with young people are visual-based, meaning they rely on images and videos to convey information. Writing skills are essential for school, but sometimes it’s easier (and more fun) for students to engage with their learning using formats they’re more comfortable with. Instead of a written response to a textbook chapter, have students react using an appropriate TikTok trend. If students are required to show their work, ask them to create an Instagram carousel or Reel of their process and post it to a class-specific account.
• Use Twitter to illustrate the dangers of misinformation. Learning to find and cite accurate sources is a key skill for students, especially at higher grade levels. Unfortunately, misinformation is easy to encounter on social media, where anyone can make a claim or spread false information without providing a source. Show students an inaccurate tweet or other social post and ask them to verify or debunk its claims. Have them document their research process and cite the sources they used to fact-check the post.
• Use LinkedIn to help older students craft their resumes. Marketing themselves in a professional sense isn’t always a skill young people learn in school, but it’s a skill that proves useful for nearly every adult. Have students use LinkedIn to craft a professional objective, organize and explain their work and educational experiences, ask for recommendations and start making connections with potential mentors and employers.

Best Practices for Social Media in Education

For many young people, social media is a part of their (and their parents’) everyday lives. Chances are, if a teacher chooses to incorporate social media into a lesson, many students will already be familiar with the platform and how to use it. Since students may be accustomed to using social media outside of an educational context, it’s crucial that teachers set ground rules and expectations for the appropriate use of these tools.

The following are some best practices that will keep social media a safe and productive place for students and their teachers:

Set professional boundaries: Many teachers also likely have personal social media accounts, so when using these platforms for lessons, it’s best to create an entirely new account dedicated solely to academics. Keep accounts private and invitation-only so that no one besides students and their parents can access the content. No one, teachers included, should be posting anything about their personal lives or content that is unrelated to the course. Invite students to create new user accounts as well to avoid mixing their personal and academic business.

Prioritize increasing digital literacy: Generations of digital natives (including today’s school-aged children and many of their parents) have likely already been practicing online etiquette, but it never hurts to review both practical and appropriate ways to use social media. Remind students that anything they post online has the potential to exist forever, which becomes especially important as they begin to apply to colleges and search for jobs. Students should conduct themselves online just as they are expected to in school.

Promote student achievements: You and your students put in a lot of work during the school year — share your accomplishments with the community! If your school has a public social media account, provide the account manager with information about your class’s latest project or an upcoming showcase so members of the community can see what students have been up to. Not only does this give students an opportunity to show off their work, but it also serves as promotional information for anyone considering enrolling their own children in the school.

Manage multiple accounts from the same place: If you manage multiple accounts for one or more classes, use a tool like Hootsuite or Facebook Publishing (which integrates Facebook and Instagram) to draft and schedule posts for multiple platforms at once. This is especially helpful when students and parents need the same information, but each group predominantly uses a different platform.

Part of a teacher’s job is to never stop learning, whether it’s about the subject matter they teach, new educational tools or innovative ways to engage students. The University of San Diego offers multiple courses for educators in the Professional and Continuing Education program, including classes covering educational technology , digital literacy , equity in the classroom and more. USD also offers certificate programs that focus on specific aspects of education, so that teachers can build a suite of skills in areas like STEAM education or supporting English language learners .

For a full range of USD courses available through the PCE program, explore all course offerings here .

How can I ensure students’ safety on social media?

To protect students’ privacy, keep all class-related social media accounts private or invitation-only and encourage them to set their own accounts to private or create new class-specific profiles. Review proper online etiquette and behavior with students and establish firm consequences for cyberbullying. As a teacher, it’s critical to maintain professional boundaries online, so avoid discussing or posting anything personal on school social media accounts. You may even want to grant access to students’ parents so they can monitor how their children are using these spaces.

How can I use TikTok in my lessons?

According to Pew Research, 67% of U.S. teens use TikTok , with 16% on the app almost constantly. Since so many students already gather in this digital space, teachers can engage them by creatively incorporating it into lessons. Ask students to film reactions to course content using TikTok trends, conduct research via subject matter experts’ posts, or create response videos in place of traditional project reports.

Which social media platform is best for communicating with parents?

It depends on what kinds of content you want to share and which platforms parents and guardians are comfortable using. At the beginning of each school year, send out a survey asking parents to indicate their preferred social media platform, then use the top two results for parent-facing communications. With so many people on multiple social media platforms, it’s best not to limit school news to just one; fortunately, managing multiple accounts at once is simple with social media management tools like Hootsuite and Facebook Publishing.

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Home / Publications & Research / General Election manifesto analysis / General Election 2024: An analysis of manifesto pledges for education

General Election 2024: An analysis of manifesto pledges for education

Ahead of the general election on 4 th July, the Education Policy Institute (EPI), funded by the Nuffield Foundation, has published an analysis of the plans for education set out in the manifestos of the main political parties in England.

This report provides an independent, evidence-based assessment of the extent to which each of the main parties have committed to addressing the biggest challenges facing education in England.

This is the second report published by EPI on education in the general election, following our report last July in which we set out the challenges facing the education system in England and made a number of calls on any incoming government.

Overall, our analysis finds that:

• There have been proposals put forward by all the main parties that address some of the challenges facing the education system. In particular, pledges by Labour and the Liberal Democrats to reform school accountability and tackle the rising issue of children’s mental health are welcome, as are pledges by the Liberal Democrats to target funding to disadvantaged children in the early years and between the ages of 16-19. A greater focus from all parties on boosting vocational education and skills is also a positive step.
• However, there is a striking lack of clear commitments to school and college funding, with neither of the two main parties committing to increasing school funding over the next Parliament. Coupled with an absence of specific pledges to better target funding towards disadvantaged children and young people, this could lead to rising inequalities.
• Commitments in the early years and in post-16 education also lack a focus on improving quality and targeting support to the most disadvantaged children and young people. All parties have committed to rolling out free early years entitlements (and Labour’s pledge to create 3,000 nurseries in schools could help to raise quality), but there is little focus on improving access for the most disadvantaged and rebuilding early intervention services.
• Overall, the manifesto commitments do not go far enough towards addressing the key challenges facing the education system. All parties should have been clearer on how they would: tackle the soaring costs of provision for children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND), recruit and retain the education workforce our system needs (beyond headline pledges of commitments to new teachers) and address the widening disadvantage gaps across all phases, through targeted interventions and funding.

We have considered each party’s offer as a whole. We conclude that:

• The Conservative party have few commitments that seek to address the key challenges facing education and have included a number of commitments that are largely unnecessary distractions and unlikely to have any real impact on improving outcomes or tackling inequalities.
• The Labour manifesto seeks to tackle more of the immediate challenges facing the system, including through a more whole-child approach by introducing a child poverty strategy and new Young Futures Hubs. But there are still key omissions from Labour, particularly around school and college funding.
• The Liberal Democrats have the most number of commitments that are rooted in evidence, but lack detailed plans on how these commitments will be funded and delivered.
• The Green Party have made substantial commitments to additional school funding, but their proposals for ending formal assessments and abolishing Ofsted are not supported by research evidence and may lead to falling standards overall and widening attainment gaps.
• The education related commitments from Reform are somewhat limited in nature. They do not address the challenges in the education system today in any substantial way.

You can read the report in full here.

This research has been kindly funded by the Nuffield Foundation. 

The Nuffield Foundation  is an independent charitable trust with a mission to advance social well-being. It funds research that informs social policy, primarily in Education, Welfare, and Justice. The Nuffield Foundation is the founder and co-founder of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, the Ada Lovelace Institute and the Nuffield Family Justice Observatory. The Foundation has funded this project, but the views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily the Foundation. Website:  www.nuffieldfoundation.org  Twitter:  @NuffieldFound

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‘The Challenge’ Season 40 to Feature All Vets: Meet the ‘Battle of the Eras’ Cast

By Emily Longeretta

Emily Longeretta

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The longest-running reality competition series is back with its monumental 40th season. “ The Challenge 40: Battle of the Eras” will debut on MTV Wednesday, Aug. 14 at 8 p.m.

The new season will feature 40 veteran players from the series’ last 26 years, each representing their “era.”

The roster features the most champions ever, including seven-time winner Johnny “Bananas” Devenanzio, five-time champ Chris “CT” Tamburello, four-time winners Darrell Taylor and Jordan Wiseley and three-time winner Derrick Kosinski.

Winners who have won the title twice include Mark Long, Jonna Mannion, Rachel Robinson, Cara Maria Sorbello, Laurel Stucky and Jodi Weatherton. Kaycee Clark, Nehemiah Clark, Katie Cooley, Tori Deal, Brad Fiorenza, Aviv Melmed, Emily Schromm, Devin Walker and Jenny West have all taken home one win each.

The cast must “first compete at the Era Invitational and eliminate the weakest links from within their own Challenge Era for only the best will earn a coveted spot on their team,” the press release reads. “With relentless, new challenges and twists, these seasoned veterans are perpetually kept on their toes in the game they thought they had mastered. Legends will collide as they endeavor to etch their names into eternal ‘Challenge’ stone and earn their share of $1 million.”

“The Challenge 40: Battle of the Eras: Countdown Begins,” a meet-the-cast and launch special, will air on Aug. 7 at 8 p.m., one week before the premiere. Additionally, new episodes of “MTV’s Official Challenge Podcast” will drop new episodes every Thursday following the premiere.

Meet the full cast below.

Aneesa Ferreira, Brad Fiorenza, Chris “C.T.” Tamburello, Darrell Taylor, Derrick Kosinski, Jodi Weatherton, Katie Cooley, Mark Long, Rachel Robinson, and Tina Barta

Aviv Melmed, Brandon Nelson, Cara Maria Sorbello, Derek Chavez, Emily Schromm, Johnny “Bananas” Devenazio, KellyAnne Judd, Laurel Stuckey, Nehemiah Clark and Ryan Kehoe

Amanda Garcia, Averey Tressler, Cory Wharton, Devin Walker, Jonna Mannion, Leroy Garrett, Nia Moore, Tony Raines, Jordan Wiseley and Tori Deal

Horacio Gutiérrez Jr., Jenny West, Josh Martinez, Kaycee Clark, Kyland Young, Michele Fitzgerlad, Nurys Mateo, Olivia Kaiser, Paulie Calafiore, and Theo Campbell.

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Los Angeles school district bans use of cellphones, social media by students

Over 429,000 students in the nation’s second-largest school district will be prohibited from using cellphones and social media platforms during the school day after the Los Angeles Unified School District board passed the ban Tuesday.

The Los Angeles Unified School District's Board of Education voted 5-2 , approving a resolution to develop within 120 days a policy that bans student use of cellphones and social media platforms during the entire school day. The policy, which will be implemented districtwide, will go into effect by January, according to the board.

"I think we're going to be on the vanguard here, and students and this entire city and country are going to benefit as a result," said board member Nick Melvoin, who proposed the resolution.

The move is an attempt by educators to curb classroom distractions and protect students' mental health. K-12 teachers in the U.S. have increasingly faced challenges over students' cellphone use with one-third saying phone distraction is a "major problem in their classroom," according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in fall 2023.

On Tuesday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom expressed his support for efforts to restrict cellphone use in schools across the state. Newsom previously signed legislation in 2019 that allowed, but did not require, districts to limit or ban smartphone use at schools.

Going old school: Flip phone sales are surging as folks seek connection without distraction

The governor echoed U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy's remarks published Monday in a  New York Times opinion essay . Murthy called for safety warning labels – similar to those on tobacco and alcohol products – on social media platforms, citing what he considers a mental health "emergency" among young people.

"As the Surgeon General affirmed, social media is harming the mental health of our youth," Newsom said in a statemen t Tuesday. "Building on legislation I signed in 2019, I look forward to working with the Legislature to restrict the use of smartphones during the school day. When children and teens are in school, they should be focused on their studies – not their screens."

Five reasons kids are missing school. Chronic absenteeism is schools' 'biggest problem.'

'Full-time job being the police of the phone'

The Los Angeles ban will expand on its existing policy that prohibits "the use of cellular phones, pagers, or any electronic signaling device by students on campus during normal school hours or school activities, excluding the students’ lunchtime or nutrition breaks." The current policy was adopted in 2011.

For the updated policy, the Los Angeles Unified School District board said school officials will have to consider options for cellphone storage, such as locked pouches or lockers during school hours. Officials will also need to consider age and grade-level appropriate guidelines, along with what exceptions should be made for students with learning or physical disabilities.

The ban has received mixed reactions from school administrators, parents, and students who have noted concerns over student ownership, safety, and communication, and enforcing the policy on a wide scale, The Los Angeles Times reported.

Board member George McKenna voted against the resolution and cited concerns that the policy would be too restrictive. Board member Scott Schmerelson also voted against the resolution saying it was unclear whether the ban would be implemented during noninstructional time and questioned who would enforce the policy.

"I think it's going to be a full-time job being the police of the phone," Schmerelson said.

Supporters of the ban said a similar policy at a district middle school has improved the campus' learning environment, according to The Times.

Board members supporting the ban wrote in their agenda that research "indicates that limiting cellphone usage and social media access during the school day increases academic performance and has positive effects on student mental health." They added that research has shown a correlation between cellphone addiction and increased rates of anxiety and cyberbullying.

School cellphone bans in other states, schools

Parents and educators across the country have expressed growing concern over the impact of cellphones on young people, including classroom distractions and potential mental health issues. As of the 2021-2022 school year, more than 76% of K-12 public schools prohibit cellphone use in non-academic settings, according to the National Center for Education Statistics .

But in recent years, lawmakers have considered legislation restricting smartphone use in schools. Last year, Florida became the first state to prohibit student phone use during class time and to block student access to social media on school Wi-Fi.

In March, Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb signed a bill prohibiting students from using phones and other wireless devices in classrooms.  Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine signed a similar bill  in May that requires school districts to establish a policy governing cellphone usage during school hours.

As of June, lawmakers in at least eight states have considered passing similar legislation, USA TODAY previously reported .

Contributing: Sara Chernikoff and Kinsey Crowley, USA TODAY; Reuters

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General Election: Humanists UK publishes parties’ policies on humanist issues

24 June, 2024

Humanists UK has published its comparison of the seven major British parties’ policies on some of the most important issues to humanists ahead of the General Election on 4 July.

The in-depth table covers nine areas and is based on parties’ manifestos, policies, and direct responses from parties to Humanists UK’s questions. It is accessible from Humanists UK’s general election hub , which also includes in-depth analyses of some of the major Manifestos.

Humanists UK has also summarised its table in the form of a shareable graphic .

The issues covered include humanist marriages, assisted dying, education issues (inclusive assemblies, school admissions, inclusive RE, and illegal schools), secular reform of the House of Lords, appointing an ambassador for Freedom of Religion and Belief (FoRB), and decriminalising abortion. 

Take action

Ask your candidates where they stand on Humanists UK’s election priorities.

Although the table covers the major parties’ positions, we also need to know where each individual candidate stands on our campaigns. This will help us make connections with tomorrow’s MPs. Humanists UK is encouraging its members and supporters to hold their candidates to account in the election, and find out what their views are on issues affecting the non-religious.

Humanists UK Director of Public Affairs and Policy Richy Thompson commented:

‘General elections are an opportunity for citizens and civil society to advance the human rights and ethical issues they care about. We must make sure that humanist voices are heard and included to push for a more inclusive society free from discrimination and for action on these longstanding issues that don’t always get a hearing in the clamour of parties’ election campaigns.’

Northern Ireland Humanists is preparing a table of key issues for voters in Northern Ireland to publish once manifestos in Northern Ireland are published.

Combined analysis: all major parties

We’ve produced a table comparing the policies of Labour, the Conservatives, Reform UK, the Lib Dems, the SNP, and Plaid Cymru.

In-depth: Labour Party Manifesto

What Labour’s Manifesto does and and doesn’t say on humanist issues.

In-depth: Conservative Party Manifesto

What the Conservative Manifesto does and and doesn’t say on humanist issues.

In-depth: Liberal Democrat Manifesto

What the Lib Dem Manifesto does and and doesn’t say on humanist issues.

In-depth: Green Party of England and Wales Manifesto

What the Green Manifesto does and and doesn’t say on humanist issues.

Northern Ireland parties

Once all the major NI parties have all published Manifestos, we’ll be adding our analysis of how they stand on humanist issues.

For further comment or information, media should contact Humanists UK Director of Public Affairs and Policy Richy Thompson at [email protected] or phone 0203 675 0959.

Read our policy table for the parties standing in Great Britain.

Read more about our General Election work .

Humanists UK is independent of all political parties and does not support, fund, or advocate any particular political party.

Humanists UK is the national charity working on behalf of non-religious people. Powered by over 120,000 members and supporters, we advance free thinking and promote humanism to create a tolerant society where rational thinking and kindness prevail. We provide ceremonies, pastoral care, education, and support services benefitting over a million people every year and our campaigns advance humanist thinking on ethical issues, human rights, and equal treatment for all.

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