elea%2E2011%2E8%2E2%2E154
E–Learning and Digital Media
Volume 8 Number 2 2011
www.wwwords.co.uk/ELEA
Media Literacy Pedagogy: critical and
new/twenty-first-century literacies instruction
NALOVA WESTBROOK
Language, Culture, and Society Program,
Department of Curriculum and Instruction,
Pennsylvania State University, USA
ABSTRACT This article offers a conceptualization of media literacy pedagogy in light of National
Education Technology Plan efforts, which name teaching as one of five essential areas to build an
education system that can increase as well as sustain the United States’ economic growth and
prosperity in the global economy. In particular, two distinct forms – critical media literacy, with origins
in the Frankfurt and cultural studies tradition, and new/twenty-first-century literacies instruction, the
result of socio-linguistic and ethnographic traditions – can be evaluated from Fenstermacher &
Richardson’s quality in teaching model that includes assessment based on the process-product
paradigm, cognitive science, and constructivism. This article concludes that, while all three of these
research programs may help to gauge media literacy models of pedagogy in general, constructivism,
and to a lesser extent cognitive science, may be the most appropriate paradigms.
Ways in which to teach media literacy have caught the attention of federal stakeholders, in so far as
such instruction can help to leverage the world standing of the United States’ economy. The
current Obama administration is pouring millions of dollars into ‘connected teaching’, a frame that
helps K through 12 teachers of all subject matters to improve their practice by being connected –
virtually speaking – to all kinds of media technology, which would allow twenty-four-hour access
to the latest trends in their respective subject fields. This access is presumed to optimize learning
performance outcomes of our students. Meanwhile, one could argue that literacy educators, who
have adopted media literacy pedagogy, have been at the forefront of advancing the connected
teaching model, perhaps albeit unknowingly, for decades to stay abreast of cutting-edge media
texts, tools, and technologies (Hobbs, 2007) that influence the out-of-school literacy practices of our
nation’s kids. In particular, pedagogues of critical and new/twenty-first-century literacies embrace
technology-laden – though not necessarily technology-driven – instruction that challenges
hierarchical readings of various media and acknowledgement of students’ use with media as a
segue into development of higher-order skills such as critical thinking and problem-solving (NCTE,
2007). Accordingly, one might argue then that connected teaching, from a media literacy
standpoint, can best be realized from a quality in teaching model that makes use of constructivism
and, to some extent, cognitive science more than conventional process-product teaching.
This article charts a conceptual framework of media literacy pedagogy, which includes a
means to understand practitioner-level quality of instruction when one is engaged in teaching
media literacy. The article opens with a conceptualization of media literacy pedagogy, and moves
to cover theory of critical and new literacies instruction. Fused into the discussion is the connected
teaching idea from the National Education Technology Plan (NETP), and its relationship with
media literacy pedagogy. In addition, this article draws from Fenstermacher & Richardson’s (2005)
‘quality in teaching’ model that looks at three dominant fields of teaching – process-product,
cognitive science, and constructivism – all of which, one may argue, can be employed as a means
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Media Literacy Pedagogy
for educators to assess and evaluate media literacy pedagogy. The article concludes that
constructivism and cognitive science may be the most appropriate lenses through which to gauge
media literacy pedagogy because of their teacher-as-facilitator and teacher-as-motivator grounding.
However, media literacy pedagogues should not fully abandon the process-product paradigm
tradition, which may remind practitioners of the importance of factual knowledge in the media
literacy curriculum.
Media Literacy Pedagogy Conceptual Framework
A theoretical framework of media literacy pedagogy can be informed by a clear conceptual
demarcation of media literacy learning outcomes, which one may take from the notion of literacy
as noted in many state English language arts standards (Hobbs, 2007), as well as from common core
principles of media literacy from the broader field of media literacy education. This media literacy
learning model includes, as shown in Figure 1, how literacy is an amalgam of reading and writing,
as well as listening, speaking, and viewing. According to Elizabeth Thoman (2003), media literacy is
predicated, on several core principles in conjunction with each other: (1) Media are constructions
with unique language; (2) Media construct social reality; (3) Media have commercial and political
implications; (4) Audiences negotiate meaning in media; (5) Media contain ideological and value
messages. In other words, Figure 1 represents, as a whole, a model of what it means to be media
literate, particularly in an English language arts context.
Figure 1. Media Literacy Learning (Outcomes).
Of course, media literacy educators are equally concerned not only with the extent to which
students are media literate themselves, but also with the extent to which media literacy educators
can teach media literacy, and find ways to reflect on and improve their practice; that is, media
literacy educators are concerned with ways in which to define media literacy content pedagogy, or
pedagogy that reflects media literacy subject knowledge (e.g. framing, manufactured consent) in
the hope that such a model would serve as a guide for optimal instructional strategies, practices,
and activities of all media literacy learners.
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Despite a considerable body of research on media literacy pedagogy in literacy education and
media studies circles, scholars continue to debate each of these terms. The most widely circulating
definition of media literacy involves the ability to ‘decode, evaluate, analyze, and produce both
print and electronic media’ (Aufderheide, 1993, p. 79). While this definition of media literacy may
be a sufficient starting point, any notion of ‘media’ recalls Marshall McLuhan’s (1964) work that
underscores media as an amalgam of conventions and codes that drive message construction.
‘Literacy’ is also a contested concept, often conveying several meanings. Nonetheless, for the
purposes of this article, literacy can be seen as the process of identifying typographic symbols
representing phonemes (Ong, 1982). For the purposes of this article, pedagogy is conceptualized as
Freirean styles of instruction that are problem-posing and constructivist in nature (Freire, 1998).
Taken together, media literacy pedagogy can be defined as problem-posing and constructivist
teaching that nurtures learning to identify, evaluate, and analyze codes and conventions of
typographic and post-typographic mediated texts. Such pedagogy also involves the production of,
and additional practical work with, various media (Sefton-Green, 1995).
Media literacy education scholars rarely use the words ‘media’, ‘literacy’, and ‘pedagogy’ in a
single term. Dan Flemming (1993) popularized ‘media teaching’ at an age when educators were
just beginning to acknowledge the role of digital media in media literacy education. ‘Media
pedagogy’ (Kellner, 1998) is a common term for practitioners, with emphasis often on the social,
contextual aspects of teaching media literacy. Perhaps the closest reference to media literacy
pedagogy comes in the form of media literacy instruction (Hobbs & Frost, 1998, 2003), which puts
emphasis on distinct instructional strategies over and above reflection on the instruction itself.
Reasons for variation in the field stem in part from a school of thought in which media literacy is
considered to be part of the broader field of media education, in the same way that literacy is
considered to be part of the broader field of literacy education. In other words, some scholars
(Masterman, 1997; Buckingham, 2003; Duncan & Tyner, 2003) view media literacy as the product
of media education. Indeed, one may observe that the concept of media literacy education is much
more the preserve of scholars in the United States, whereas media education is more commonly
employed in circles in the external English-speaking commonwealth. What is clear, with lack of
reference to a single concept that merges media literacy and pedagogy, as opposed to media
literacy and teaching or instruction, is that scholars may be loath to connect explicitly the intimate
relationship between media literacy learning and teaching, and reflection on such an educational
relationship. The emphasis here on including pedagogy with media literacy is to foreground theory
and practice, learning and teaching, task and achievement, as part and parcel of a larger whole.
From this vantage point, the concept ‘media literacy pedagogy’ makes the explicit connection
between what Fenstermacher & Richardson (2005) would call quality teaching and media literacy
learning. Quality teaching can be explicated as good teaching and successful teaching in terms of
the combination of tasks and achievement. When a secondary English teacher engages in content
analysis of advertising in Hollywood blockbusters, and students can ultimately identify subtle use
of name brand cigarettes, for example, in these visual mediated texts, one might argue that quality
teaching has occurred because the pedagogical task of content analysis has achieved media literacy
learning as evinced in knowledge of product placement. When a media literacy educator shows
students how to evaluate search engine results via Google, one might argue that quality teaching
has occurred because the pedagogical task using web analysis led students to demonstrate a keen
understanding of search engine optimization; students can explain why certain company websites
appear at the top of the search engine above other results. In both instances, drawing from
Fenstermacher & Richardson (2005), quality teaching for media literacy pedagogy must rest on the
extent to which good teaching (task) and successful teaching (achievement) leads to media literacy
learning that the media literacy pedagogue intended.
In addition, for Fenstermacher & Richardson (2005), the quality of any teaching approach can
be evaluated on the basis of the extent to which teaching involves task- or learner-sensitive and
achievement- or learner-dependent orientation toward particular knowledge and skills within a
moral framework. Consistent with Freire (1998), Fenstermacher & Richardson’s (2005) perspective
calls for an evaluation of media literacy pedagogy that is grounded in ethics: ‘Quality teaching, it
appears, is about more than whether something is taught. It is also about how it is taught. Not only
must the content be appropriate, proper, and aimed at some worthy purpose, the methods
employed have to be morally defensible and grounded in shared conceptions of reasonableness’
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(p. 189). According to this logic, for media literacy pedagogy to be within the scope of quality
teaching, there is the need for the instructor to be engaged in ethical teaching of media, and that
would lead students to increased media literacy learning – a position that seems to be in line with
what some media literacy educators might call ‘critical media literacy instruction’. For example, a
secondary English teacher might engage in a textual analysis of propaganda in George Orwell’s
1984 novel and in a textual analysis of a YouTube version of the same narrative. For such media
literacy pedagogy to be high in quality teaching, students would need to demonstrate not only the
various ways in which both media (the novel and the YouTube clip) construct propaganda in the
achievement sense, but also how the teacher does not pass judgment of one text, such as the novel
as being inherently better over the electronic video in a way that underscores a high and low
culture divide.
Moreover, the moral code of media literacy pedagogy demands what Paulo Freire would call
‘civic courage’, given that many of the mediated texts that students may find entertaining, teachers
and K-12 curriculum administrators may, on the other hand, find unsettling (Flores-Koulish, 2005).
This stance could lead to inoculation or protectionist media literacy pedagogy. However, the
critical media literacy educator would not necessarily oppose analysis of mediated texts that include
what he or she views as vulgar or obscene language and visuals. Instead, the critical media literacy
pedagogue would develop strategies that encourage students and the teacher to interrogate their
own complicity with or attitude against sex and violence saturation on screen, for example.
Critical Media Literacy Instruction
Conceptualization of media literacy pedagogy also takes into account two distinct forms – critical
media literacy instruction, with origins in the Frankfurt and cultural studies tradition, and
new/twenty-first-century literacies instruction (New London Group, 1996), the result of sociolinguistic and ethnographic tradition. In a nutshell, critical media literacy brings to the fore the
relationship between media literacy and critical literacy (Semali, 2000b, 2003), which challenges
canonical texts as well as privileged readings of all texts. Such instruction in media literacy is a
directive to cultivate skills in ‘analyzing media codes and conventions, abilities to criticize
stereotypes, dominant values, and ideologies, and competencies to interpret the multiple meanings
and messages generated by media texts’ (Kellner & Share, 2005, p. 372). The ethos of critical media
literacy instruction is grounded in analysis of textual power relations.
Critical media literacy, then, draws heavily from the fifth tenant of media literacy as conveyed
in the conceptual media literacy learning model, above, that is centered on the notion that all
media contain ideological and value messages. Ideological critique of media can be traced to the
work of the Frankfurt School. The school arose as a result of exiled German Jews who fled Hitler’s
totalitarianism and found themselves enmeshed in the rise of Hollywood media that seemed to
cloud consumer consciousness and create passive audiences who were largely unaware of the
imposing culture industry (Adorno & Horkheimer, 1999) aimed at maintaining hegemonic control
over media consumers. Ironically, Frankfurtian approaches to the study of media tend to lead
inadvertently to a critical media literacy that assumes an elitist position in which only a selected
few consumers are aware of ‘mass deception’ brought on by corporate media industry. In addition,
many media studies and media literacy education scholars trace the intellectual roots of critical
media literacy instruction to cultural studies, a school of thought that addresses the values of, and,
more acutely, the ways in which popular texts are constructed to represent various subgroups, such
as the working class or British Arabs. Cultural studies scholars center culture as the unit of analysis
to engage in a form of analytical thinking that is commonly known as ‘the politics of
representation’ (Hall, 1997). Citing Carmen Luke, Kellner & Share (2005) maintain that critical
media literacy involves ‘unveiling the political and social construction of knowledge, as well as
addressing principles of equity and social justice related to representation’ (p. 370). In order to teach
critical media literacy, educators may encourage students to work from cultural studies forms of
analysis of media to ask questions such as: Who is represented in these texts? Who is representing
these groups? For whom are the representations constructed? How are different (cultural)
audiences likely to interpret these texts? The reason critical media literacy involves critique of
representation is because, similar to schools, media texts – and one might also now argue tools and
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technologies – are cites of struggles over meaning (Giroux,1997) that ultimately have real-world
implications for the ways in which cultural groups view themselves and the other (Said, 1979). For
Semali (2000a), ‘ teaching critical media literacy must aspire to teach the youth in our classrooms,
particularly those impressionable groups of individuals in desperate search of identity and a place in
the adult world ... critical media literacy [needs] ... to generate a strong commitment to developing
a world free of oppression and exploitation’ (p. 287). In essence, critical media literacy pedagogy
behooves media literacy educators to move beyond pure textualist forms (codes and conventions)
of media analysis to reflect on content teaching that encourages democracy (Jhally & Lewis, 1998).
With such a mantra, what is also an explicit part of critical media literacy pedagogy is its
relationship with critical pedagogy (Freire, 1970). More so than media literacy pedagogues, critical
media literacy pedagogues aim to challenge not only hierarchies within and between media texts,
but also the hierarchies of the ways in which such media texts might be taught in order to
empower (Shor, 1992) and transform (hooks, 1994) traditional teacher-centered classrooms into
more student-centered cites of knowledge production. For example, in discussing the philospphy of
critical media literacy pedagogy, Kellner & Share (2005) observe that ‘a student-centered, bottomup approach is necessary ... with the student’s own culture, knowledge, and experiences ...
[forming the basis of] collaborative inquiry and video production [that] can be ways for students to
voice their discoveries’ (p. 371). Furthermore, ‘teaching critical media literacy should be a
participatory, collaborative project. Watching television shows or films together could promote
productive discussions between teachers and students (or parents and children), with an emphasis
on eliciting student views, producing a variety of interpretations of media texts, and teaching basic
principles of hermeneutics and criticism’ (Kellner & Share, 2005, p. 373). From this standpoint,
critical media literacy pedagogy embraces the idea of connected teaching in which students and
media technologies are both co-facilitators in instruction of analysis of media. Building on student
knowledge of how to use Flash and to code HTML for critique of the ways in which corporate
websites represent women is just as important as tapping into Wikipedia and blogs that offer
commentary on the same subject. Students tend to enter the classroom with more exposure to and
use with media technologies than their teachers, who often are of a generation that harbors anxiety
with those same media technologies (NCTE, 2007). The critical media literacy pedagogue of any
age would welcome student media tech-savviness into the classroom, and employ such knowledge
as a means to enhance media literacy learning of the entire class, including the learning of the
teacher. Critical media literacy centers styles of instruction that empower and transform the ways
in which teachers, students, and technologies collaborate to analyze mediated social structures.
New/Twenty-First-Century Literacies Instruction
New/twenty-first-century literacies instruction, while not a mutually exclusive entity from critical
media literacy instruction, is concerned more with the ways in which new media (i.e. social
networking sites, iPods, VoIP) challenge, re-inscribe, expand and, in many instances, connect inand out-of-school literacy (Morrell, 2002). In other words, those literacy skills such as viewing and
writing and listening may be increasingly compromised or enhanced by Web 2.0 networks where
end-user writer access questions who ultimately is the author of a particular text (Kist, 2005).
Particularly important is addressing the widening gap between the literacies in our society and the
literacies of our schools (Baker, 2007). Figure 2 shows the relationship between critical media
literacy and new literacies, with media literacy pedagogy as the common dominator of the two. As
previously mentioned, this model aims to show that critical media literacy and new/twenty-firstcentury literacies are distinct, though mutually compatible, forms of instruction and pedagogy for
media literacy learning and teaching. Indeed, in the classroom, many teachers of media literacy,
particularly in English language arts contexts, may in fact vacillate between the two, and, may not
entertain such a theoretical difference.
This model, as represented in Figure 2, suggests that media literacy pedagogy begins at the
top with practitioners taking into account their own beliefs, reflection, and praxis, all of which carry
equal weight, to form pedagogy, as opposed to mere instruction, of media literacy. From the
conceptual definition of media literacy pedagogy flow two distinct and mutually inclusive forms, as
indicated by two separate arrows, leading to critical and new/twenty-first-century literacies. The
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overlap of the two large ovals conveys the inclusiveness of both approaches in terms of one
another, whereas the arrows highlight their distinctiveness. However, the arrows in the model
emerge from the same place to indicate a common heritage between critical and new/twenty-firstcentury literacies instruction and pedagogy.
Figure 2. Media Literacy Pedagogy Model.
The contribution of new/twenty-first-century literacies to media literacy learning can be traced to
the socio-linguistic and ethnographic approach that, like critical media literacy, aims to ‘investigate
literacy and to place special emphasis on revealing, understanding, and addressing power relations’
(Hull & Schultz, 2001, p. 585). As mentioned, new/twenty-first-century media literacies scholars
theorize about the literacies adolescents and young adults use in out-of-school contexts and other
social contexts, and how such literacies – largely the result of media technology use within specific
social situations – translate into multiple media literacy learning. For example, many K-12 learners
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engage in use of Instant Messenger (Kaiser, 2010) for intimate communication with friends at home
(Hu et al, 2004). A new literacy pedagogue may encourage students to explore how use of this
online, synchronous medium influences print literacy as well as other informal learning in what
James Gee (2005) might call an ‘affinity space’. The notion of affinity spaces is central to new and
twenty-first-century literacies instruction because it calls into question the ways in which use of
new media in voluntary circumstances cultivates involuntary literacy learning. Learning may occur
as a result of those (online) participants formulating a set of informal rules of communication that
become standard ways of communicating, such as with the use of acronyms. Or learning may
enhance students’ written and verbal communication, depending on the make-up of the
participatory community (Jenkins, 2006). What is important in particular is that students may not
necessarily be aware of the literacies they use in relation to Instant Messenger or of how they
adopt, transfer, or contest these literate forms of communication for formal schooling literacies. In
other words, literacy educators read work of students that may increasingly include heavy use of
acronyms from consistent Instant Messenger use and texting via mobile devices.
Such a case should lead educators to ask students what media they are engaged with outside
of school in the same way that teachers of English as a second language may inquire about the
native language identities of their students who exhibit unconventional syntax structures in their
expository writing. Ethnographic roots of such pedagogy entail observing – at the very least
acknowledging – and employing strategies such as scaffolding (Abram, 2008) for students to use
these social mediated literacies to improve communication (NCTE, 2007). From this standpoint,
media literacy is an inherent social process that is the product of social interaction via media. In
short, new and twenty-first-century literacies, instruction may demand taking students’ mediated
literacy practices in informal, situated spaces to inform formal literacy acquisition.
Another school of thought on new and twenty-first-century media literacy pedagogy is rooted
in the idea of developing media literacy skills for future employment (New London Group, 1996;
NCTE, 2007). ‘The challenge for our education system is to leverage technology to create relevant
learning experiences that mirror students’ daily lives and the reality of their futures’ (US
Department of Education, 2010, p. 9). The Department of Education has partnered with leading
media industry companies such as Cisco and Apple to infuse media technologies in K-12 schools
and teacher education programs that would leverage teaching and learning of higher order
thinking. Media literacy educators have marshaled in efforts to develop pedagogies that tap into the
ways in which media transform lives and have at times outpaced pedagogies (Semali, 2003). In the
digital media literacy explosion, ‘multiple communication channels, hybrid text forms, new social
relations, and the increasing salience of linguistic and cultural diversity’ (Hull & Schultz, 2001,
p. 589) have opened a means for schools and media industry to form stronger ties, recognizing the
importance and the power of the media industry as an increasingly primary stakeholder in many
schooling efforts. New and twenty-first-century literacy pedagogy centralizes the phenomenon
whereby employers increasingly demand workers who have an ease and intimacy with
multiliteracies (New London Group, 1996). That is, cultural, linguistic, and media literacies, for
example, are important, particularly knowing when and how to use them to provide services to
company clients. Indeed, it is now common practice for many brand marketing departments to
employ social media to appeal to customer desires to cultivate brand loyalties. Media literacy skills
in the age of convergence culture (Jenkins, 2006) – that is, a culture in which new media are
consistently overlapping and merging – will indeed lead to a stronger workforce that can meet
employer needs. New and twenty-first-century literacy instruction – and more so pedagogy –
address this concern.
Furthermore, one may choose to collapse new and twenty-first-century literacies into a single
pedagogical approach, when, in fact, some practitioners may view them as two autonomous media
literacy pedagogical perspectives. The subtle difference can be explained by the idea that twentyfirst-century literacies instruction accounts more for the rise in technology-tools saturation of the
digital age, leading to teaching media literacy more in historical terms, whereas new literacy
theorists tend to look more at how the rise in use of these technology tools shapes and is shaped by
the social and psycholinguistic contexts in which media literacy learning and teaching takes place.
Both, in the end, have a technology focus, which is the reason for referring to new and twenty-firstcentury literacies as one and the same. Nonetheless, since all of these pedagogical approaches are
adopted in practitioner circles, one must highlight their impact on media literacy education.
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Media Literacy Pedagogy Policy
What should stand out in the conceptual model of media literacy pedagogy, particularly in
highlighting critical and new/twenty-first-century literacies instruction, is the emphasis on learnercentered education. While connected and quality teaching are not one and the same, the connected
teaching frame of the National Education Technology Plan is consistent with the conceptual model
of media literacy pedagogy thus far explained via quality teaching. Connected teaching can be
viewed as a form of quality teaching because it speaks directly to a policy position that ‘rejects the
one size fits all’ approach to learning mired in causality claims of teaching. Fenstermacher &
Richardson (2005) observe this trend in conceptions of quality teaching that can inform poor
teaching policies:
There is currently a considerable policy focus on quality teaching, much of it rooted in the
presumption that the improvement of teaching is a key element in improving student learning.
We believe that this policy focus rests on a naive conception of the relationship between
teaching and learning. This conception treats the relationship as a straightforwardly causal
connection, such that if it could be perfected, it could then be sustained under almost any
conditions, including poverty, vast linguistic, racial, or cultural differences, and massive
differences in the opportunity factors of time, facilities, and resources. Our analysis suggests that
this presumption of simple causality is more than naive; it is wrong ... the teacher may be viewed
as having a kind of limited liability for the success or failure of the learner to acquire the content
taught… Improving the quality of what the teacher does is only a part of improving student
learning. It is, however, a most important part, one that deserves further scrutiny ... (p. 192)
Such is the position, too, of the National Education Technology Plan that promotes media literacy
pedagogical approaches in favor of individualized instruction that builds on prior experience of
each learner within context. This policy position reflects a clear constructivist epistemology.
Consider another passage of the National Education Technology Plan that invites consideration of
the non-causality approach lauded by Fenstermacher & Richardson (2005), by rejecting the teacher
as transmitter and the sole standards-based perspective:
In contrast to traditional classroom instruction, which often consists of a single educator
transmitting the same information to all learners in the same way, the model puts students at the
center and empowers them to take control of their own learning by providing flexibility on
several dimensions. A core set of standards-based concepts and competencies form the basis of
what all students should learn, but beyond that students and educators have options for engaging
in learning: large groups, small groups, and work tailored to individual goals, needs, and
interests. (US Department of Education, 2010, p. 10)
What the National Education Technology Plan promotes is collaboration among media literacy
teaching and learning, where teachers and media technologies provide a matrix for learnercentered classrooms. Current federal policy of this sort foregrounds media literacy of ‘technology
for ownership of learning’, in which students, just as much as teachers, take a leadership role for
what they know, increasingly because of the twenty-four-hour ‘on-demand opportunities for
learning’ (US Department of Education, 2010).
Reading Media Literacy Pedagogy: teaching paradigms perspective
Fenstermacher & Richardson (2005) recall for all educators the research paradigms on teaching that
have marked our field, and which can thus further inform conceptual evaluations of the emerging
terrain of media literacy pedagogy. Indeed, it was the rise of product-process views in the 1960s
that catapulted research on teaching to center stage of educational scholarship, grounded in
measured outcomes-based teaching largely from student test scores. This may be a difficult
perspective from which to view media literacy pedagogy when many practitioners in the field
would argue for media literacy as being more of a process than content (Semali & Hammett, 1999).
In other words, media literacy pedagogy may be less concerned with content instruction that leads
to what the National Education Technology Plan would call ‘factual knowledge’ of target audience
and transmedia navigation, as measured by criterion and norm-referenced assessments, for
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instance, than it is with the ability to demonstrate critical analysis of the ways in which soap operas
cater to specific media consumer groups and how a Jay-Z single changes across MP3 players, iPods,
and Blackberries. Instead, quality instruction of media literacy can be gauged more from the
vantage point of two paradigms of research on teacher education – namely, cognitive science and,
as previously mentioned, constructivism.
While constructivist learning has already been demonstrated as the primary framework
through which media literacy pedagogical and policy commitments can be sustained, it is also
important for media literacy educators to keep in mind the cognitive science element of media
literacy. One might argue that quality teaching of media literacy pedagogy centers on what NETP
proponents would call ‘motivational engagement’. Any pedagogue who proclaims the importance
of quality instruction of media literacy is likely to find high levels of motivation among his or her
learners. Of course, when students have the opportunity to engage in evaluation of popular culture
representation of Lady Gaga, or to conduct a semiotic analysis of a Victoria’s Secret magazine
advertisement, there is an unquestioned sense that they will yearn to participate in problem-posing
teaching.
Still, the cognitive science component to the evaluation of media literacy pedagogy can be
viewed more along the crossroads between process-product and constructivist teaching. Cognitive
teaching approaches aim to get at instruction that enhances cognition largely through more
complex learning outcomes, such as critical thinking and problem solving, and self-direction (US
Department of Education, 2010). Quality teaching of media literacy pedagogy – broadly-speaking –
is to be evaluated in part on the basis of the extent to which teachers can develop activities that
enhance motivation and these divergent cognitive abilities. Indeed, media literacy educators may
deem their teaching successful if their students, after participating in a deep viewing exercise
(Paillotet et al, 2000), show awareness of how much subtle acts of violence in popular culture are
pervasive by producing iMovies that offer alternatives to aggression and physical force-laden
narratives. However, in this sense, one would argue that cognitive science is a necessary, but not a
sufficient, condition through which one should approach media literacy pedagogy or exclusively
evaluate its effectiveness.
Conclusion: Process-Product Paradigm Still Important, Just Not Paramount
Despite much fanfare from new/twenty-first-century literacies and critical media literacy educators
that would distance learning from process-product modes of instruction, it can be argued that
media literacy pedagogy must take into account what the National Education Technology Plan
names ‘factual knowledge’. Content versus process debate in media literacy education underscores
critical analysis as demonstrated in the ability to encode and decode texts (Hall, 1973). But we as
educators must take into account that for media literacy pedagogy to be recognized as an
autonomous instructional field to be integrated across the curriculum (Semali, 2000b), or to stand
within its own curricular framework, there should be conceptual – dare one say? – standards (Quin
& McMahon, 1993) that allow media literacy pedagogy to mark itself as distinct, though not
necessarily separate, from other pedagogical content approaches (Shulman, 1987). Media literacy
educators who claim identities as media literacy pedagogues should be able to demonstrate
familiarity with such terms as the public sphere, agenda-setting, voice-over narration, participatory
culture, big media, and sensationalism, in theory as well as in practice, in the same way that literacy
educators who claim literacy pedagogy identities should command knowledge of phonics,
expository writing, alliteration, intertextuality, proverbs, syllabication, and metaphor. One should
possess particular keys to interpreting media messages (Silverblatt, 2008). The challenge is to not let
process-product teaching lead media literacy learning where media literacy educators are rewarded
or punished on the basis of their learners’ test scores. The point is that process-product teaching
should remind media literacy pedagogues to evaluate media literacy pedagogy on the basis of a set
of core content skills that work in tandem with performance/project-based learning (Share, 2009)
of media literacy in an age when, according to the United States Federal government, to know how
to read, write, and be connected to various media is more important than ever for individual
learners, and, as a by-product, for this country’s economy.
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NALOVA WESTBROOK is a doctoral candidate in curriculum and instruction in the program of
Language, Culture, and Society at Pennsylvania State University. She is a media studies and literacy
researcher, as well as a K-12 teacher and teacher educator. She also has professional industry
experience in Internet marketing. Her interests include media literacy, K-12 teacher education
(metacognition and socialization), pedagogy, and mixed methods research. Correspondence: Nalova
Westbrook, 331 West College Avenue No. 6, State College, PA 16801, USA ([email protected]).
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www.wwwords.co.uk/ELEA
Media Literacy Pedagogy: critical and
new/twenty-first-century literacies instruction
NALOVA WESTBROOK
Language, Culture, and Society Program,
Department of Curriculum and Instruction,
Pennsylvania State University, USA
ABSTRACT This article offers a conceptualization of media literacy pedagogy in light of National
Education Technology Plan efforts, which name teaching as one of five essential areas to build an
education system that can increase as well as sustain the United States’ economic growth and
prosperity in the global economy. In particular, two distinct forms – critical media literacy, with origins
in the Frankfurt and cultural studies tradition, and new/twenty-first-century literacies instruction, the
result of socio-linguistic and ethnographic traditions – can be evaluated from Fenstermacher &
Richardson’s quality in teaching model that includes assessment based on the process-product
paradigm, cognitive science, and constructivism. This article concludes that, while all three of these
research programs may help to gauge media literacy models of pedagogy in general, constructivism,
and to a lesser extent cognitive science, may be the most appropriate paradigms.
Ways in which to teach media literacy have caught the attention of federal stakeholders, in so far as
such instruction can help to leverage the world standing of the United States’ economy. The
current Obama administration is pouring millions of dollars into ‘connected teaching’, a frame that
helps K through 12 teachers of all subject matters to improve their practice by being connected –
virtually speaking – to all kinds of media technology, which would allow twenty-four-hour access
to the latest trends in their respective subject fields. This access is presumed to optimize learning
performance outcomes of our students. Meanwhile, one could argue that literacy educators, who
have adopted media literacy pedagogy, have been at the forefront of advancing the connected
teaching model, perhaps albeit unknowingly, for decades to stay abreast of cutting-edge media
texts, tools, and technologies (Hobbs, 2007) that influence the out-of-school literacy practices of our
nation’s kids. In particular, pedagogues of critical and new/twenty-first-century literacies embrace
technology-laden – though not necessarily technology-driven – instruction that challenges
hierarchical readings of various media and acknowledgement of students’ use with media as a
segue into development of higher-order skills such as critical thinking and problem-solving (NCTE,
2007). Accordingly, one might argue then that connected teaching, from a media literacy
standpoint, can best be realized from a quality in teaching model that makes use of constructivism
and, to some extent, cognitive science more than conventional process-product teaching.
This article charts a conceptual framework of media literacy pedagogy, which includes a
means to understand practitioner-level quality of instruction when one is engaged in teaching
media literacy. The article opens with a conceptualization of media literacy pedagogy, and moves
to cover theory of critical and new literacies instruction. Fused into the discussion is the connected
teaching idea from the National Education Technology Plan (NETP), and its relationship with
media literacy pedagogy. In addition, this article draws from Fenstermacher & Richardson’s (2005)
‘quality in teaching’ model that looks at three dominant fields of teaching – process-product,
cognitive science, and constructivism – all of which, one may argue, can be employed as a means
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Media Literacy Pedagogy
for educators to assess and evaluate media literacy pedagogy. The article concludes that
constructivism and cognitive science may be the most appropriate lenses through which to gauge
media literacy pedagogy because of their teacher-as-facilitator and teacher-as-motivator grounding.
However, media literacy pedagogues should not fully abandon the process-product paradigm
tradition, which may remind practitioners of the importance of factual knowledge in the media
literacy curriculum.
Media Literacy Pedagogy Conceptual Framework
A theoretical framework of media literacy pedagogy can be informed by a clear conceptual
demarcation of media literacy learning outcomes, which one may take from the notion of literacy
as noted in many state English language arts standards (Hobbs, 2007), as well as from common core
principles of media literacy from the broader field of media literacy education. This media literacy
learning model includes, as shown in Figure 1, how literacy is an amalgam of reading and writing,
as well as listening, speaking, and viewing. According to Elizabeth Thoman (2003), media literacy is
predicated, on several core principles in conjunction with each other: (1) Media are constructions
with unique language; (2) Media construct social reality; (3) Media have commercial and political
implications; (4) Audiences negotiate meaning in media; (5) Media contain ideological and value
messages. In other words, Figure 1 represents, as a whole, a model of what it means to be media
literate, particularly in an English language arts context.
Figure 1. Media Literacy Learning (Outcomes).
Of course, media literacy educators are equally concerned not only with the extent to which
students are media literate themselves, but also with the extent to which media literacy educators
can teach media literacy, and find ways to reflect on and improve their practice; that is, media
literacy educators are concerned with ways in which to define media literacy content pedagogy, or
pedagogy that reflects media literacy subject knowledge (e.g. framing, manufactured consent) in
the hope that such a model would serve as a guide for optimal instructional strategies, practices,
and activities of all media literacy learners.
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Despite a considerable body of research on media literacy pedagogy in literacy education and
media studies circles, scholars continue to debate each of these terms. The most widely circulating
definition of media literacy involves the ability to ‘decode, evaluate, analyze, and produce both
print and electronic media’ (Aufderheide, 1993, p. 79). While this definition of media literacy may
be a sufficient starting point, any notion of ‘media’ recalls Marshall McLuhan’s (1964) work that
underscores media as an amalgam of conventions and codes that drive message construction.
‘Literacy’ is also a contested concept, often conveying several meanings. Nonetheless, for the
purposes of this article, literacy can be seen as the process of identifying typographic symbols
representing phonemes (Ong, 1982). For the purposes of this article, pedagogy is conceptualized as
Freirean styles of instruction that are problem-posing and constructivist in nature (Freire, 1998).
Taken together, media literacy pedagogy can be defined as problem-posing and constructivist
teaching that nurtures learning to identify, evaluate, and analyze codes and conventions of
typographic and post-typographic mediated texts. Such pedagogy also involves the production of,
and additional practical work with, various media (Sefton-Green, 1995).
Media literacy education scholars rarely use the words ‘media’, ‘literacy’, and ‘pedagogy’ in a
single term. Dan Flemming (1993) popularized ‘media teaching’ at an age when educators were
just beginning to acknowledge the role of digital media in media literacy education. ‘Media
pedagogy’ (Kellner, 1998) is a common term for practitioners, with emphasis often on the social,
contextual aspects of teaching media literacy. Perhaps the closest reference to media literacy
pedagogy comes in the form of media literacy instruction (Hobbs & Frost, 1998, 2003), which puts
emphasis on distinct instructional strategies over and above reflection on the instruction itself.
Reasons for variation in the field stem in part from a school of thought in which media literacy is
considered to be part of the broader field of media education, in the same way that literacy is
considered to be part of the broader field of literacy education. In other words, some scholars
(Masterman, 1997; Buckingham, 2003; Duncan & Tyner, 2003) view media literacy as the product
of media education. Indeed, one may observe that the concept of media literacy education is much
more the preserve of scholars in the United States, whereas media education is more commonly
employed in circles in the external English-speaking commonwealth. What is clear, with lack of
reference to a single concept that merges media literacy and pedagogy, as opposed to media
literacy and teaching or instruction, is that scholars may be loath to connect explicitly the intimate
relationship between media literacy learning and teaching, and reflection on such an educational
relationship. The emphasis here on including pedagogy with media literacy is to foreground theory
and practice, learning and teaching, task and achievement, as part and parcel of a larger whole.
From this vantage point, the concept ‘media literacy pedagogy’ makes the explicit connection
between what Fenstermacher & Richardson (2005) would call quality teaching and media literacy
learning. Quality teaching can be explicated as good teaching and successful teaching in terms of
the combination of tasks and achievement. When a secondary English teacher engages in content
analysis of advertising in Hollywood blockbusters, and students can ultimately identify subtle use
of name brand cigarettes, for example, in these visual mediated texts, one might argue that quality
teaching has occurred because the pedagogical task of content analysis has achieved media literacy
learning as evinced in knowledge of product placement. When a media literacy educator shows
students how to evaluate search engine results via Google, one might argue that quality teaching
has occurred because the pedagogical task using web analysis led students to demonstrate a keen
understanding of search engine optimization; students can explain why certain company websites
appear at the top of the search engine above other results. In both instances, drawing from
Fenstermacher & Richardson (2005), quality teaching for media literacy pedagogy must rest on the
extent to which good teaching (task) and successful teaching (achievement) leads to media literacy
learning that the media literacy pedagogue intended.
In addition, for Fenstermacher & Richardson (2005), the quality of any teaching approach can
be evaluated on the basis of the extent to which teaching involves task- or learner-sensitive and
achievement- or learner-dependent orientation toward particular knowledge and skills within a
moral framework. Consistent with Freire (1998), Fenstermacher & Richardson’s (2005) perspective
calls for an evaluation of media literacy pedagogy that is grounded in ethics: ‘Quality teaching, it
appears, is about more than whether something is taught. It is also about how it is taught. Not only
must the content be appropriate, proper, and aimed at some worthy purpose, the methods
employed have to be morally defensible and grounded in shared conceptions of reasonableness’
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(p. 189). According to this logic, for media literacy pedagogy to be within the scope of quality
teaching, there is the need for the instructor to be engaged in ethical teaching of media, and that
would lead students to increased media literacy learning – a position that seems to be in line with
what some media literacy educators might call ‘critical media literacy instruction’. For example, a
secondary English teacher might engage in a textual analysis of propaganda in George Orwell’s
1984 novel and in a textual analysis of a YouTube version of the same narrative. For such media
literacy pedagogy to be high in quality teaching, students would need to demonstrate not only the
various ways in which both media (the novel and the YouTube clip) construct propaganda in the
achievement sense, but also how the teacher does not pass judgment of one text, such as the novel
as being inherently better over the electronic video in a way that underscores a high and low
culture divide.
Moreover, the moral code of media literacy pedagogy demands what Paulo Freire would call
‘civic courage’, given that many of the mediated texts that students may find entertaining, teachers
and K-12 curriculum administrators may, on the other hand, find unsettling (Flores-Koulish, 2005).
This stance could lead to inoculation or protectionist media literacy pedagogy. However, the
critical media literacy educator would not necessarily oppose analysis of mediated texts that include
what he or she views as vulgar or obscene language and visuals. Instead, the critical media literacy
pedagogue would develop strategies that encourage students and the teacher to interrogate their
own complicity with or attitude against sex and violence saturation on screen, for example.
Critical Media Literacy Instruction
Conceptualization of media literacy pedagogy also takes into account two distinct forms – critical
media literacy instruction, with origins in the Frankfurt and cultural studies tradition, and
new/twenty-first-century literacies instruction (New London Group, 1996), the result of sociolinguistic and ethnographic tradition. In a nutshell, critical media literacy brings to the fore the
relationship between media literacy and critical literacy (Semali, 2000b, 2003), which challenges
canonical texts as well as privileged readings of all texts. Such instruction in media literacy is a
directive to cultivate skills in ‘analyzing media codes and conventions, abilities to criticize
stereotypes, dominant values, and ideologies, and competencies to interpret the multiple meanings
and messages generated by media texts’ (Kellner & Share, 2005, p. 372). The ethos of critical media
literacy instruction is grounded in analysis of textual power relations.
Critical media literacy, then, draws heavily from the fifth tenant of media literacy as conveyed
in the conceptual media literacy learning model, above, that is centered on the notion that all
media contain ideological and value messages. Ideological critique of media can be traced to the
work of the Frankfurt School. The school arose as a result of exiled German Jews who fled Hitler’s
totalitarianism and found themselves enmeshed in the rise of Hollywood media that seemed to
cloud consumer consciousness and create passive audiences who were largely unaware of the
imposing culture industry (Adorno & Horkheimer, 1999) aimed at maintaining hegemonic control
over media consumers. Ironically, Frankfurtian approaches to the study of media tend to lead
inadvertently to a critical media literacy that assumes an elitist position in which only a selected
few consumers are aware of ‘mass deception’ brought on by corporate media industry. In addition,
many media studies and media literacy education scholars trace the intellectual roots of critical
media literacy instruction to cultural studies, a school of thought that addresses the values of, and,
more acutely, the ways in which popular texts are constructed to represent various subgroups, such
as the working class or British Arabs. Cultural studies scholars center culture as the unit of analysis
to engage in a form of analytical thinking that is commonly known as ‘the politics of
representation’ (Hall, 1997). Citing Carmen Luke, Kellner & Share (2005) maintain that critical
media literacy involves ‘unveiling the political and social construction of knowledge, as well as
addressing principles of equity and social justice related to representation’ (p. 370). In order to teach
critical media literacy, educators may encourage students to work from cultural studies forms of
analysis of media to ask questions such as: Who is represented in these texts? Who is representing
these groups? For whom are the representations constructed? How are different (cultural)
audiences likely to interpret these texts? The reason critical media literacy involves critique of
representation is because, similar to schools, media texts – and one might also now argue tools and
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technologies – are cites of struggles over meaning (Giroux,1997) that ultimately have real-world
implications for the ways in which cultural groups view themselves and the other (Said, 1979). For
Semali (2000a), ‘ teaching critical media literacy must aspire to teach the youth in our classrooms,
particularly those impressionable groups of individuals in desperate search of identity and a place in
the adult world ... critical media literacy [needs] ... to generate a strong commitment to developing
a world free of oppression and exploitation’ (p. 287). In essence, critical media literacy pedagogy
behooves media literacy educators to move beyond pure textualist forms (codes and conventions)
of media analysis to reflect on content teaching that encourages democracy (Jhally & Lewis, 1998).
With such a mantra, what is also an explicit part of critical media literacy pedagogy is its
relationship with critical pedagogy (Freire, 1970). More so than media literacy pedagogues, critical
media literacy pedagogues aim to challenge not only hierarchies within and between media texts,
but also the hierarchies of the ways in which such media texts might be taught in order to
empower (Shor, 1992) and transform (hooks, 1994) traditional teacher-centered classrooms into
more student-centered cites of knowledge production. For example, in discussing the philospphy of
critical media literacy pedagogy, Kellner & Share (2005) observe that ‘a student-centered, bottomup approach is necessary ... with the student’s own culture, knowledge, and experiences ...
[forming the basis of] collaborative inquiry and video production [that] can be ways for students to
voice their discoveries’ (p. 371). Furthermore, ‘teaching critical media literacy should be a
participatory, collaborative project. Watching television shows or films together could promote
productive discussions between teachers and students (or parents and children), with an emphasis
on eliciting student views, producing a variety of interpretations of media texts, and teaching basic
principles of hermeneutics and criticism’ (Kellner & Share, 2005, p. 373). From this standpoint,
critical media literacy pedagogy embraces the idea of connected teaching in which students and
media technologies are both co-facilitators in instruction of analysis of media. Building on student
knowledge of how to use Flash and to code HTML for critique of the ways in which corporate
websites represent women is just as important as tapping into Wikipedia and blogs that offer
commentary on the same subject. Students tend to enter the classroom with more exposure to and
use with media technologies than their teachers, who often are of a generation that harbors anxiety
with those same media technologies (NCTE, 2007). The critical media literacy pedagogue of any
age would welcome student media tech-savviness into the classroom, and employ such knowledge
as a means to enhance media literacy learning of the entire class, including the learning of the
teacher. Critical media literacy centers styles of instruction that empower and transform the ways
in which teachers, students, and technologies collaborate to analyze mediated social structures.
New/Twenty-First-Century Literacies Instruction
New/twenty-first-century literacies instruction, while not a mutually exclusive entity from critical
media literacy instruction, is concerned more with the ways in which new media (i.e. social
networking sites, iPods, VoIP) challenge, re-inscribe, expand and, in many instances, connect inand out-of-school literacy (Morrell, 2002). In other words, those literacy skills such as viewing and
writing and listening may be increasingly compromised or enhanced by Web 2.0 networks where
end-user writer access questions who ultimately is the author of a particular text (Kist, 2005).
Particularly important is addressing the widening gap between the literacies in our society and the
literacies of our schools (Baker, 2007). Figure 2 shows the relationship between critical media
literacy and new literacies, with media literacy pedagogy as the common dominator of the two. As
previously mentioned, this model aims to show that critical media literacy and new/twenty-firstcentury literacies are distinct, though mutually compatible, forms of instruction and pedagogy for
media literacy learning and teaching. Indeed, in the classroom, many teachers of media literacy,
particularly in English language arts contexts, may in fact vacillate between the two, and, may not
entertain such a theoretical difference.
This model, as represented in Figure 2, suggests that media literacy pedagogy begins at the
top with practitioners taking into account their own beliefs, reflection, and praxis, all of which carry
equal weight, to form pedagogy, as opposed to mere instruction, of media literacy. From the
conceptual definition of media literacy pedagogy flow two distinct and mutually inclusive forms, as
indicated by two separate arrows, leading to critical and new/twenty-first-century literacies. The
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overlap of the two large ovals conveys the inclusiveness of both approaches in terms of one
another, whereas the arrows highlight their distinctiveness. However, the arrows in the model
emerge from the same place to indicate a common heritage between critical and new/twenty-firstcentury literacies instruction and pedagogy.
Figure 2. Media Literacy Pedagogy Model.
The contribution of new/twenty-first-century literacies to media literacy learning can be traced to
the socio-linguistic and ethnographic approach that, like critical media literacy, aims to ‘investigate
literacy and to place special emphasis on revealing, understanding, and addressing power relations’
(Hull & Schultz, 2001, p. 585). As mentioned, new/twenty-first-century media literacies scholars
theorize about the literacies adolescents and young adults use in out-of-school contexts and other
social contexts, and how such literacies – largely the result of media technology use within specific
social situations – translate into multiple media literacy learning. For example, many K-12 learners
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engage in use of Instant Messenger (Kaiser, 2010) for intimate communication with friends at home
(Hu et al, 2004). A new literacy pedagogue may encourage students to explore how use of this
online, synchronous medium influences print literacy as well as other informal learning in what
James Gee (2005) might call an ‘affinity space’. The notion of affinity spaces is central to new and
twenty-first-century literacies instruction because it calls into question the ways in which use of
new media in voluntary circumstances cultivates involuntary literacy learning. Learning may occur
as a result of those (online) participants formulating a set of informal rules of communication that
become standard ways of communicating, such as with the use of acronyms. Or learning may
enhance students’ written and verbal communication, depending on the make-up of the
participatory community (Jenkins, 2006). What is important in particular is that students may not
necessarily be aware of the literacies they use in relation to Instant Messenger or of how they
adopt, transfer, or contest these literate forms of communication for formal schooling literacies. In
other words, literacy educators read work of students that may increasingly include heavy use of
acronyms from consistent Instant Messenger use and texting via mobile devices.
Such a case should lead educators to ask students what media they are engaged with outside
of school in the same way that teachers of English as a second language may inquire about the
native language identities of their students who exhibit unconventional syntax structures in their
expository writing. Ethnographic roots of such pedagogy entail observing – at the very least
acknowledging – and employing strategies such as scaffolding (Abram, 2008) for students to use
these social mediated literacies to improve communication (NCTE, 2007). From this standpoint,
media literacy is an inherent social process that is the product of social interaction via media. In
short, new and twenty-first-century literacies, instruction may demand taking students’ mediated
literacy practices in informal, situated spaces to inform formal literacy acquisition.
Another school of thought on new and twenty-first-century media literacy pedagogy is rooted
in the idea of developing media literacy skills for future employment (New London Group, 1996;
NCTE, 2007). ‘The challenge for our education system is to leverage technology to create relevant
learning experiences that mirror students’ daily lives and the reality of their futures’ (US
Department of Education, 2010, p. 9). The Department of Education has partnered with leading
media industry companies such as Cisco and Apple to infuse media technologies in K-12 schools
and teacher education programs that would leverage teaching and learning of higher order
thinking. Media literacy educators have marshaled in efforts to develop pedagogies that tap into the
ways in which media transform lives and have at times outpaced pedagogies (Semali, 2003). In the
digital media literacy explosion, ‘multiple communication channels, hybrid text forms, new social
relations, and the increasing salience of linguistic and cultural diversity’ (Hull & Schultz, 2001,
p. 589) have opened a means for schools and media industry to form stronger ties, recognizing the
importance and the power of the media industry as an increasingly primary stakeholder in many
schooling efforts. New and twenty-first-century literacy pedagogy centralizes the phenomenon
whereby employers increasingly demand workers who have an ease and intimacy with
multiliteracies (New London Group, 1996). That is, cultural, linguistic, and media literacies, for
example, are important, particularly knowing when and how to use them to provide services to
company clients. Indeed, it is now common practice for many brand marketing departments to
employ social media to appeal to customer desires to cultivate brand loyalties. Media literacy skills
in the age of convergence culture (Jenkins, 2006) – that is, a culture in which new media are
consistently overlapping and merging – will indeed lead to a stronger workforce that can meet
employer needs. New and twenty-first-century literacy instruction – and more so pedagogy –
address this concern.
Furthermore, one may choose to collapse new and twenty-first-century literacies into a single
pedagogical approach, when, in fact, some practitioners may view them as two autonomous media
literacy pedagogical perspectives. The subtle difference can be explained by the idea that twentyfirst-century literacies instruction accounts more for the rise in technology-tools saturation of the
digital age, leading to teaching media literacy more in historical terms, whereas new literacy
theorists tend to look more at how the rise in use of these technology tools shapes and is shaped by
the social and psycholinguistic contexts in which media literacy learning and teaching takes place.
Both, in the end, have a technology focus, which is the reason for referring to new and twenty-firstcentury literacies as one and the same. Nonetheless, since all of these pedagogical approaches are
adopted in practitioner circles, one must highlight their impact on media literacy education.
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Media Literacy Pedagogy Policy
What should stand out in the conceptual model of media literacy pedagogy, particularly in
highlighting critical and new/twenty-first-century literacies instruction, is the emphasis on learnercentered education. While connected and quality teaching are not one and the same, the connected
teaching frame of the National Education Technology Plan is consistent with the conceptual model
of media literacy pedagogy thus far explained via quality teaching. Connected teaching can be
viewed as a form of quality teaching because it speaks directly to a policy position that ‘rejects the
one size fits all’ approach to learning mired in causality claims of teaching. Fenstermacher &
Richardson (2005) observe this trend in conceptions of quality teaching that can inform poor
teaching policies:
There is currently a considerable policy focus on quality teaching, much of it rooted in the
presumption that the improvement of teaching is a key element in improving student learning.
We believe that this policy focus rests on a naive conception of the relationship between
teaching and learning. This conception treats the relationship as a straightforwardly causal
connection, such that if it could be perfected, it could then be sustained under almost any
conditions, including poverty, vast linguistic, racial, or cultural differences, and massive
differences in the opportunity factors of time, facilities, and resources. Our analysis suggests that
this presumption of simple causality is more than naive; it is wrong ... the teacher may be viewed
as having a kind of limited liability for the success or failure of the learner to acquire the content
taught… Improving the quality of what the teacher does is only a part of improving student
learning. It is, however, a most important part, one that deserves further scrutiny ... (p. 192)
Such is the position, too, of the National Education Technology Plan that promotes media literacy
pedagogical approaches in favor of individualized instruction that builds on prior experience of
each learner within context. This policy position reflects a clear constructivist epistemology.
Consider another passage of the National Education Technology Plan that invites consideration of
the non-causality approach lauded by Fenstermacher & Richardson (2005), by rejecting the teacher
as transmitter and the sole standards-based perspective:
In contrast to traditional classroom instruction, which often consists of a single educator
transmitting the same information to all learners in the same way, the model puts students at the
center and empowers them to take control of their own learning by providing flexibility on
several dimensions. A core set of standards-based concepts and competencies form the basis of
what all students should learn, but beyond that students and educators have options for engaging
in learning: large groups, small groups, and work tailored to individual goals, needs, and
interests. (US Department of Education, 2010, p. 10)
What the National Education Technology Plan promotes is collaboration among media literacy
teaching and learning, where teachers and media technologies provide a matrix for learnercentered classrooms. Current federal policy of this sort foregrounds media literacy of ‘technology
for ownership of learning’, in which students, just as much as teachers, take a leadership role for
what they know, increasingly because of the twenty-four-hour ‘on-demand opportunities for
learning’ (US Department of Education, 2010).
Reading Media Literacy Pedagogy: teaching paradigms perspective
Fenstermacher & Richardson (2005) recall for all educators the research paradigms on teaching that
have marked our field, and which can thus further inform conceptual evaluations of the emerging
terrain of media literacy pedagogy. Indeed, it was the rise of product-process views in the 1960s
that catapulted research on teaching to center stage of educational scholarship, grounded in
measured outcomes-based teaching largely from student test scores. This may be a difficult
perspective from which to view media literacy pedagogy when many practitioners in the field
would argue for media literacy as being more of a process than content (Semali & Hammett, 1999).
In other words, media literacy pedagogy may be less concerned with content instruction that leads
to what the National Education Technology Plan would call ‘factual knowledge’ of target audience
and transmedia navigation, as measured by criterion and norm-referenced assessments, for
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instance, than it is with the ability to demonstrate critical analysis of the ways in which soap operas
cater to specific media consumer groups and how a Jay-Z single changes across MP3 players, iPods,
and Blackberries. Instead, quality instruction of media literacy can be gauged more from the
vantage point of two paradigms of research on teacher education – namely, cognitive science and,
as previously mentioned, constructivism.
While constructivist learning has already been demonstrated as the primary framework
through which media literacy pedagogical and policy commitments can be sustained, it is also
important for media literacy educators to keep in mind the cognitive science element of media
literacy. One might argue that quality teaching of media literacy pedagogy centers on what NETP
proponents would call ‘motivational engagement’. Any pedagogue who proclaims the importance
of quality instruction of media literacy is likely to find high levels of motivation among his or her
learners. Of course, when students have the opportunity to engage in evaluation of popular culture
representation of Lady Gaga, or to conduct a semiotic analysis of a Victoria’s Secret magazine
advertisement, there is an unquestioned sense that they will yearn to participate in problem-posing
teaching.
Still, the cognitive science component to the evaluation of media literacy pedagogy can be
viewed more along the crossroads between process-product and constructivist teaching. Cognitive
teaching approaches aim to get at instruction that enhances cognition largely through more
complex learning outcomes, such as critical thinking and problem solving, and self-direction (US
Department of Education, 2010). Quality teaching of media literacy pedagogy – broadly-speaking –
is to be evaluated in part on the basis of the extent to which teachers can develop activities that
enhance motivation and these divergent cognitive abilities. Indeed, media literacy educators may
deem their teaching successful if their students, after participating in a deep viewing exercise
(Paillotet et al, 2000), show awareness of how much subtle acts of violence in popular culture are
pervasive by producing iMovies that offer alternatives to aggression and physical force-laden
narratives. However, in this sense, one would argue that cognitive science is a necessary, but not a
sufficient, condition through which one should approach media literacy pedagogy or exclusively
evaluate its effectiveness.
Conclusion: Process-Product Paradigm Still Important, Just Not Paramount
Despite much fanfare from new/twenty-first-century literacies and critical media literacy educators
that would distance learning from process-product modes of instruction, it can be argued that
media literacy pedagogy must take into account what the National Education Technology Plan
names ‘factual knowledge’. Content versus process debate in media literacy education underscores
critical analysis as demonstrated in the ability to encode and decode texts (Hall, 1973). But we as
educators must take into account that for media literacy pedagogy to be recognized as an
autonomous instructional field to be integrated across the curriculum (Semali, 2000b), or to stand
within its own curricular framework, there should be conceptual – dare one say? – standards (Quin
& McMahon, 1993) that allow media literacy pedagogy to mark itself as distinct, though not
necessarily separate, from other pedagogical content approaches (Shulman, 1987). Media literacy
educators who claim identities as media literacy pedagogues should be able to demonstrate
familiarity with such terms as the public sphere, agenda-setting, voice-over narration, participatory
culture, big media, and sensationalism, in theory as well as in practice, in the same way that literacy
educators who claim literacy pedagogy identities should command knowledge of phonics,
expository writing, alliteration, intertextuality, proverbs, syllabication, and metaphor. One should
possess particular keys to interpreting media messages (Silverblatt, 2008). The challenge is to not let
process-product teaching lead media literacy learning where media literacy educators are rewarded
or punished on the basis of their learners’ test scores. The point is that process-product teaching
should remind media literacy pedagogues to evaluate media literacy pedagogy on the basis of a set
of core content skills that work in tandem with performance/project-based learning (Share, 2009)
of media literacy in an age when, according to the United States Federal government, to know how
to read, write, and be connected to various media is more important than ever for individual
learners, and, as a by-product, for this country’s economy.
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NALOVA WESTBROOK is a doctoral candidate in curriculum and instruction in the program of
Language, Culture, and Society at Pennsylvania State University. She is a media studies and literacy
researcher, as well as a K-12 teacher and teacher educator. She also has professional industry
experience in Internet marketing. Her interests include media literacy, K-12 teacher education
(metacognition and socialization), pedagogy, and mixed methods research. Correspondence: Nalova
Westbrook, 331 West College Avenue No. 6, State College, PA 16801, USA ([email protected]).
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