Preparing Pre-Service Teachers to Teach Media Literacy: A Response to “Fake News”

The call for integrating media literacy into public education is not new. However, with the rise of “fake news” and sensationalism along with technology’s ever-growing role in society, media literacy offers teachers and students a set of skills to analyze, critique, and respond to the information that appears before them in the digital texts they read, the television shows they watch, and their social media feeds. As multiple case studies have identified ways teachers are already blending media literacy into their instruction, this case study used a lesson plan assignment coupled with a survey to analyze how pre-service teachers enrolled in an instructional technology class approached media literacy. We found that the pre-service teachers tended to use constructivist teaching methods that required students, not the teacher, to interpret the media messages. In addition, the pre-service teachers used questions as a strategy to facilitate that interpretation, though at times the questions included the pre-service teachers’ own viewpoints, values, and perspectives. We conclude with ways teacher educators can develop their pre-service teachers’ ability to bring media literacy skills into their content-area instruction.