From Fake News to Racism: A Study of Change in a Reading Intervention Class

Abstract

This qualitative study investigated how teaching an historical unit through a critical lens might empower students to evaluate sources, challenge fake news, and make informed decisions. The reading intervention teacher in this study engaged secondary students in reading, discussing, and critiquing a series of multimodal historical texts. Grounded in a critical literacies framework, Shelly used “brave spaces” to stimulate discussion on issues of (in)equality, bias, and misinformation to challenge students’ perceptions and often (mis)conceptions of what constitutes propaganda and “fake news.” We describe how Shelly’s 6‐week unit facilitated higher order thinking and students’ beliefs in their capacity to take action and make a difference. We elaborate the need for students to. be savvy, critical consumers of media, particularly in today’s sociopolitical climate where truth and alternative facts are frequently blurred.

Information Literacy and Discourse Analysis for Verifying Information among EFL Learners

“…One of the significant benefits of empowering students to evaluate news and information is maintaining responsible citizenship (Craft et al, 2016), and empowering students to act and make a difference (Delaney et al, 2022) which this study is thought to achieve. Similarly, the findings of this study call for incorporating critical media literacy pedagogy in classroom practices in which "media representation, power, and ideology" are important concepts to be integrated into teaching (Garcia et al, 2013, p. 110).…”