Teaching and learning news media in politically unsettled times

Garrett, H. James; Schmeichel, Mardi; McAnulty, Joseph; Janis, Sonia

doi:10.1080/1554480x.2020.1738939

Cited by 13 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…The influence of ideology on information exposure is characteristic of truth decay in that ideological positioning influences individuals' determination of what is truthful and what is fake. To address this concern, we assert that news media literacy ought to become a central feature of social studies education at the secondary level as well as in preservice and in-service teacher education (Clark et al, 2020;Garrett et al, 2020;Schmeichel et al, 2018). We recommend encouraging practitioners to explicitly consider the ideological reputations of news sources when teaching current events and to foreground the value of including multiple sources in an effort to integrate news media literacy into their curricula.…”

Section: Ideology and Teaching Current Eventsmentioning

confidence: 99%

How Social Studies Teachers Choose News Resources for Current Events Instruction

Clark

Schmeichel

Garrett³

2021

Harvard Educational Review

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Integrating current events and news media in the curriculum is essential to social studies teachers’ efforts to promote critical citizenship skills. In this mixed-methods study, Christopher H. Clark, Mardi Schmeichel, and H. James Garrett draw from a survey of more than one thousand social studies teachers to examine factors that influence the frequency of teachers’ current events instruction and their choices of news resources for use in their classes. They found that respondents’ ideologies influenced the number and type of sources they preferred and that teachers listed student-focused reasons like reading accessibility more than news-focused criteria like in-depth reporting as reasons for their choices. These findings have significant consequences for researchers and teacher educators who must find ways to help teachers discard assumptions that news sources are neutral or without perspective. The authors maintain that if teachers are to help students develop the ability to interpret news media within a complicated political and informational landscape, they must be better prepared to think critically about the news sources they incorporate into their lessons.

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Section: Ideology and Teaching Current Eventsmentioning

confidence: 99%

How Social Studies Teachers Choose News Resources for Current Events Instruction

Clark

Schmeichel

Garrett³

2021

Harvard Educational Review

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“…The cultural changes brought by the digital age place us in a digital world that is challenging for schools. It is a matter of urgency for teachers to be trained in CDL (Garrett et al 2020;McDougall et al 2018;Meehan et al 2015;Santisteban et al 2020;Schwartz 2001) so that they can design educational interventions and develop alternative curricular materials, going beyond the mere use of technology as a teaching resource and holding texts and narratives up to scrutiny from all angles.…”

Section: The Digital World Is Challengingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pre-Service Teachers’ Critical Digital Literacy Skills and Attitudes to Address Social Problems

2020

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The emergence and expansion of social networks in the digital age has led to social transformations that have a great impact within the field of education. Teacher-training programs face the challenge of preparing future teachers to critically interpret digital media. They must succeed in this if we are to develop citizens who are well informed and reflective, which then raises the question: Are future teachers critical thinkers? This study took third- and fourth-year students of primary education (n = 322) at five Spanish universities and explored their capacity for constructing critical discourses. It examined how well they can analyze and discuss information from digital media on social problems like poverty, economic crises, social justice, and the media. Its findings reveal that future teachers have difficulty in putting together critical discourses based on information from the Internet on social problems. Those who have doubts, compare, analyze, and reason are the minority.

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“…This paper relies on Maksl et al ’s (2015) definition of news media literacy, which “refers to the knowledge and motivations needed to identify and engage with journalism” (p. 29) and which is considered a subset of critical media literacy (Kellner and Share, 2007). Therefore, embedding news media literacy in social studies classrooms goes beyond the inclusion of current events in order to teach students how to consider, examine and analyze the sources themselves while simultaneously attending to the ways media texts are connected to broader social and political processes and issues of power (Garrett et al , 2020). This study, therefore, adopts a broad view of news media literacy to explore how preservice social studies teachers are making sense of this work—including how they imagine embedding both print and digital news media in their practices.…”

Section: News Media Literacy In Social Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…(e.g. Schmeichel et al , 2018; Garrett et al , 2020; Damico and Panos, 2018). While learning to teach about news media is a complex and challenging task, muddled by the many conflicting components of how an individual learns to teach (e.g.…”

Section: News Media Literacy In Social Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Preservice teachers’ perceptions of teaching news media literacy

McAnulty

2020

SSRP

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PurposeThis study explores social studies preservice teacher’s orientation toward teaching news media literacy in the era of fake news. Previous literature indicates that many social studies teachers express a desire to maintain neutrality in the classroom. As such, this study focuses on the preservice teachers’ articulated pedagogical practices around news media literacy, as well as the described forces and factors that influence their described stances.Design/methodology/approachThis study uses work from the field of political communication to analyze course assignments, semi-structured interviews and survey responses in order to consider the ways 39 preservice social studies teachers articulated their anticipated and enacted pedagogical practices around news media literacy.FindingsFindings suggest a prevalent desire among the participants to pursue neutrality by presenting “both sides,” echoing traditional journalistic pursuits of objectivity. The possible consequences of this desire are also explored. Additionally, the study suggests that parents, administrators and the content standards are viewed as forces, which will constrain their practices.Practical implicationsUsing theorizing about the civil sphere, this paper considers implications for teacher educators. The civil sphere may provide a lens with which to analyze news media and may help preservice teachers adopt practices they view as risky.Originality/valueThis study aims to extend conversations around the teaching of news media, controversial political and social issues and the preparation of social studies teachers in the current social and political ecology by working to align the field with growing conversations in the field of political communication and journalism.

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Teaching and learning news media in politically unsettled times

Cited by 13 publications

References 15 publications

How Social Studies Teachers Choose News Resources for Current Events Instruction

How Social Studies Teachers Choose News Resources for Current Events Instruction

Pre-Service Teachers’ Critical Digital Literacy Skills and Attitudes to Address Social Problems

Preservice teachers’ perceptions of teaching news media literacy

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