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The Importance of Critical Thinking for News Media Literacy

With news available at the tap of a finger, keyboard, or remote, we are often exposed to a barrage of news media. Some of it is high quality, informational news, while other pieces may be riddled with biases, inaccuracies, and misinformation. That’s why it’s so important for students to learn to properly evaluate the news they’re consuming. Read on for an exploration of news media literacy and the importance of critical thinking in supporting it.

News Media Literacy

News media literacy is the ability to critically analyze, evaluate, and interpret the information presented in news media. It involves understanding how news is produced, identifying bias and misinformation, and being able to distinguish between fact and opinion. In our modern world, where information is instantly available and constantly changing, news media literacy has become an essential skill for individuals of all ages to navigate the media landscape and make informed decisions.

Students being taught news media literacy develop a variety of interrelated and crucial skills and knowledge. They learn to identify when news sources are presenting biased or misleading information and to seek out additional sources to confirm or refute claims. News literacy also helps students understand how news is produced and distributed, including the role of journalists, media organizations, and the impact of social media on the news cycle.

A study in the Journal of Media Literacy Education found that highly news literate teens were:

• More intrinsically motivated to consume news
• More skeptical
• More knowledgeable about current events

This is important because it can help prevent the spread of misinformation and disinformation, both of which can have serious consequences, such as spreading false information about health, elections, or social issues. News media literacy skills can help students recognize harmful reporting or sharing, and take steps to stop their spread.

The difference news media literacy makes is not limited to the student alone, but can also impact their wider community. Authors Hobbs et al. explore this concept in their article “Learning to Engage: How Positive Attitudes about the News, Media Literacy, and Video Production Contribute to Adolescent Civic Engagement.” They found that “the best predictors of the intent to participate in civic engagement are having positive attitudes about news, current events, reporting, and journalism.”

Given its importance and wide-ranging impact, news media literacy is an essential part of education today. Here’s how teachers can use critical thinking to build up news literacy—and vice versa—in their students.

Critical Thinking Skills for News Literacy

Critical thinking is a key component of news media literacy, as it allows individuals to assess the accuracy and credibility of news sources, identify biases and misinformation, and make informed decisions. Critical thinking involves questioning assumptions, evaluating evidence, and considering multiple perspectives, which are all crucial skills for navigating our complex and constantly evolving media landscape. Let’s explore these critical thinking skills and their impact on news literacy in more depth.

Evaluating Sources and Evidence

One essential critical thinking skill that supports news literacy is the ability to evaluate sources. In today's world, where anyone can publish information online, it is important to be able to distinguish between credible sources and those that lack credibility. This means understanding the differences between primary and secondary sources, recognizing when a source is biased or unreliable, and evaluating the credentials of the author or publisher.

Being able to evaluate sources and evidence for credibility and accuracy allows students to identify fake news and other harmful media. Research on fake news and critical thinking highlights critical thinking as “an essential skill for identifying fake news.”

Analyzing Information

Another critical thinking skill that supports news literacy is the ability to analyze information. This involves breaking down complex information into its component parts, evaluating the evidence presented, and considering the implications of the information. For example, if a news article presents statistics about a particular issue, it is important to evaluate the methodology used to collect the data, the sample size, and the relevance of the statistics to the issue at hand.

Identifying and Evaluating Biases

Critical thinking also allows students to identify and evaluate biases. News sources may have biases based on political or social values, financial interests, or personal opinions. It is important to be able to recognize these biases and to evaluate how they may affect the presentation of information. By developing these critical thinking skills, students can become more discerning consumers of news media, and better equipped to make informed decisions based on the information presented.

How Practicing News Literacy Develops Critical Thinking

Becoming more news literate can also help develop critical thinking skills in turn. By engaging with news media and seeking out diverse perspectives on issues, individuals can develop their ability to question assumptions, evaluate evidence, and consider multiple perspectives. This can lead to a more nuanced understanding of complex issues and a greater appreciation for the diverse perspectives that exist in society.

This creates a powerful education win-win. News literacy and critical thinking effectively support each other and allow students to become informed and discerning consumers of media.

How THINKING PRO Helps Students Build News Literacy

Our THINKING PRO system is built around local news media and teaches students media literacy and critical thinking in a meaningful and impactful way. It walks students through a simple but effective process for analyzing news media, involving:

• Differentiating simple statements (answers to who, what, when, and where questions) and complex claims (answers to why and how questions)
• Evaluating evidence supporting each
• Differentiating evidence and opinion in complex claims

Our interactive learning videos allow students to hone these media literacy and critical thinking skills. With THINKING PRO, students will learn to:

• Identify various categories of claims that can be made within an informational text (e.g.: cause and effect, problem and solution, value judgments)
• Evaluate internal logic of informational text by:
• analyzing the consistency of information within the text and with one’s own background knowledge, and
• identifying conflicting information within the text.
• Synthesize information, as well as claims and their supporting evidence, across multiple passages of texts, and integrate it with one’s own understanding

Here at Thinking Habitats, we use thinking tools to empower young people to lead successful lives and contribute to the wellbeing of their communities. Our online platform has helped students improve their critical thinking, reading comprehension, and news media literacy, and has had significant individual and community impacts. Try THINKING PRO today , and join our students who feel more empowered in decision-making, more mindful with their news engagement, and more connected to their local community!

Hobbs, R., Donnelly, K., Friesem, J., & Moen, M. (2013). Learning to engage: How positive attitudes about the news, media literacy, and video production contribute to Adolescent Civic engagement. Educational Media International , 50 (4), 231–246. https://doi.org/10.1080/09523987.2013.862364  

Machete, P., & Turpin, M. (2020). The use of critical thinking to identify fake news: A systematic literature review. Lecture Notes in Computer Science , 235–246. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45002-1_20  

Maksl, A., Ashley, S., & Craft, S. (2015). Measuring News Media Literacy. Journal of Media Literacy Education , 6 (3), 29–45. https://doi.org/10.23860/jmle-6-3-3  

Research guides: Identifying bias: What is bias? . University of Wisconsin Green Bay. (n.d.). https://libguides.uwgb.edu/bias  

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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.
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• 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.
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• Freire, P. (2010). Pedagogy of the oppressed ( M. B. Ramos, Trans.). The Continuum International Publishing Group.
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• 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.
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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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Critical Thinking: The Key to Digital Literacy

By: fishtree - november 10, 2014.

How should we define digital literacy? Educational leader and PhD student, Lynnea West, explains her research on the principle ways of redefining education through technology, using digital literacy as a key driver: “I would hope that moving forward, we just call them ‘literacies’ and they’re just considered essential components of good literacy practices. We’re living in an online world and digital tools are our reality , so literacy in the broader context is just how we make meaning of what we’re reading or interpreting and how that joins together with our place in the world.”

The concept of digital literacy has been broken down in numerous attempts to define what constitutes a ‘digital native’ and what skills are central to our understanding and interpretation of digital content. Lynnea argues the key to fostering a digital mindset lies in the emphasis of critical thinking. “Critical thinking has always been emphasized in literacy skills but they become much more apparent when it comes to interpreting digital content”, she says. Referencing the work of Dr. Julie Coiro and Donald J. Leu, Lynnea explains, “there’s actually no real correlation between how well a student reads on paper and how well a student can read in a digital environment, so you have to teach those skills and strategies really explicitly about analyzing and evaluating.”

The Evolution of Literacy

Lynnea outlines how digital technology has changed the way we interact with text, taking a more collaborative approach to the way in which we make meaning. “Before, it was like: ‘Here’s your paper, do your worksheet’. Now, we have the opportunity to represent our thinking using visual images in a collage, or by creating a video, so we have a lot of different ways to respond to reading. We also get the opportunity to create meaning together. For example, when responding to a concept, you can create your meaning and demonstrate that through a video. Then, your students can reply to that video and the story gets continued. So it’s not just this singular piece anymore, it’s this dynamic and multimodal process, it’s a back and forth, and it’s collaborative . ”

Lynnea describes technology’s potential to give every single student a voice, showcasing student creativity and critical thinking skills like never before. “If you have a student who is somewhat quiet in a face-to-face conversation, they may just need that time to process, think, listen and then reflect later, and have their voice heard. So you can use technology to increase student voice in a way that they’d never have been able to before.”

The Digital Native

There has been widespread debate on the topic of the digital native, and whether or not the digital generation should inherit the title. Lynnea explains her logic that it’s not simply a question of ‘being’, but rather of ‘becoming’, a digital native. “I’m not in the generation of the digital native but I can certainly navigate my way through technology”, she says. “I don’t think it’s as simple as you are or you aren’t, I think you can be developed in whatever it is that you want to do. Anything, if you have that growth mindset, you can take to the next level .”

While most educators are moving towards this digital mindset, many remain reluctant to embrace the ‘digital native’ status. Lynnea argues that much of this reluctance boils down to the fear of letting go. “I think there are some teachers who have been teaching with pretty impressive results, who feel a sense of mastery, and it’s really uncomfortable to let that go”, she says.

Blurred Lines

Another reason for such reluctance, Lynnea explains, is the blurring of lines between students and teacher, as the traditional school structure begins to change shape. With educators now being urged to join in the learning cycle with their students, the idea of taking a back seat remains frightening to some. “It’s going to continue to change and evolve, and I think the students will be the drivers of that, and that makes the lines a little blurry between teachers and students… Who’s the learner? And who’s the teacher? ”

While many may grimace at the idea of these blurred lines, Lynnea is excited at the prospect of students taking the reigns. “To me, this is awesome. I have two kids, and if they can be put in the role of leader at the age of eleven, then great. That’s a sense of mastery and accomplishment. It’s exciting to me to have those roles a little more blurry”, she says.

As literacies continue to evolve and adapt to our more complex, digital surroundings, the skills at the center are gaining more significance than ever. Could critical thinking be the key driver in our quest for the ‘digital native’? Should educators take a step back to promote the innovative mindset of the 21st century? Are we essentially foreigners in the land of the digital generation? Perhaps it’s time for us to indulge in some critical thinking of our own.

P.S. If you liked this post, you might want to check out fishtree.com . Start teaching with the 21st century learning platform today… the ideal tool for adaptive, blended and mobile learning!

About the author:

Lorna Keane is a teacher of French, English and ESL. She specializes in language teaching and has taught in second and third-level institutions in several countries. She holds a B.A in languages and cultural studies and an M.A in French literature, theory and visual culture. Follow her on Twitter or connect on LinkedIn .

Follow @fishtree_edu

Image credits:  Lucélia Ribeiro  /  CC BY 2.0

Media and Information Literacy, a critical approach to literacy in the digital world

What does it mean to be literate in the 21 st century? On the celebration of the International Literacy Day (8 September), people’s attention is drawn to the kind of literacy skills we need to navigate the increasingly digitally mediated societies.

Stakeholders around the world are gradually embracing an expanded definition for literacy, going beyond the ability to write, read and understand words. Media and Information Literacy (MIL) emphasizes a critical approach to literacy. MIL recognizes that people are learning in the classroom as well as outside of the classroom through information, media and technological platforms. It enables people to question critically what they have read, heard and learned.

As a composite concept proposed by UNESCO in 2007, MIL covers all competencies related to information literacy and media literacy that also include digital or technological literacy. Ms Irina Bokova, Director-General of UNESCO has reiterated significance of MIL in this media and information landscape: “Media and information literacy has never been so vital, to build trust in information and knowledge at a time when notions of ‘truth’ have been challenged.”

MIL focuses on different and intersecting competencies to transform people’s interaction with information and learning environments online and offline. MIL includes competencies to search, critically evaluate, use and contribute information and media content wisely; knowledge of how to manage one’s rights online; understanding how to combat online hate speech and cyberbullying; understanding of the ethical issues surrounding the access and use of information; and engagement with media and ICTs to promote equality, free expression and tolerance, intercultural/interreligious dialogue, peace, etc. MIL is a nexus of human rights of which literacy is a primary right.

Learning through social media

In today’s 21 st century societies, it is necessary that all peoples acquire MIL competencies (knowledge, skills and attitude). Media and Information Literacy is for all, it is an integral part of education for all. Yet we cannot neglect to recognize that children and youth are at the heart of this need. Data shows that 70% of young people around the world are online. This means that the Internet, and social media in particular, should be seen as an opportunity for learning and can be used as a tool for the new forms of literacy.

The Policy Brief by UNESCO Institute for Information Technologies in Education, “Social Media for Learning by Means of ICT” underlines this potential of social media to “engage students on immediate and contextual concerns, such as current events, social activities and prospective employment.

UNESCO MIL CLICKS - To think critically and click wisely

For this reason, UNESCO initiated a social media innovation on Media and Information Literacy, MIL CLICKS (Media and Information Literacy: Critical-thinking, Creativity, Literacy, Intercultural, Citizenship, Knowledge and Sustainability).

MIL CLICKS is a way for people to acquire MIL competencies in their normal, day-to-day use of the Internet and social media. To think critically and click wisely. This is an unstructured approach, non-formal way of learning, using organic methods in an online environment of play, connecting and socializing.  

MIL as a tool for sustainable development

In the global, sustainable context, MIL competencies are indispensable to the critical understanding and engagement in development of democratic participation, sustainable societies, building trust in media, good governance and peacebuilding. A recent UNESCO publication described the high relevance of MIL for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

“Citizen's engagement in open development in connection with the SDGs are mediated by media and information providers including those on the Internet, as well as by their level of media and information literacy. It is on this basis that UNESCO, as part of its comprehensive MIL programme, has set up a MOOC on MIL,” says Alton Grizzle, UNESCO Programme Specialist. 

UNESCO’s comprehensive MIL programme

UNESCO has been continuously developing MIL programme that has many aspects. MIL policies and strategies are needed and should be dovetailed with existing education, media, ICT, information, youth and culture policies.

The first step on this road from policy to action is to increase the number of MIL teachers and educators in formal and non-formal educational setting. This is why UNESCO has prepared a model Media and Information Literacy Curriculum for Teachers , which has been designed in an international context, through an all-inclusive, non-prescriptive approach and with adaptation in mind.

The mass media and information intermediaries can all assist in ensuring the permanence of MIL issues in the public. They can also highly contribute to all citizens in receiving information and media competencies. Guideline for Broadcasters on Promoting User-generated Content and Media and Information Literacy , prepared by UNESCO and the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association offers some insight in this direction.

UNESCO will be highlighting the need to build bridges between learning in the classroom and learning outside of the classroom through MIL at the Global MIL Week 2017 . Global MIL Week will be celebrated globally from 25 October to 5 November 2017 under the theme: “Media and Information Literacy in Critical Times: Re-imagining Ways of Learning and Information Environments”. The Global MIL Feature Conference will be held in Jamaica under the same theme from 24 to 27 October 2017, at the Jamaica Conference Centre in Kingston, hosted by The University of the West Indies (UWI).

Alton Grizzle , Programme Specialist – Media Development and Society Section

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Critical Thinking and Media Literacy in the Digital Age

Teaching critical thinking is the first step to media literacy in the digital age.With varying perspectives, social channels, media outlets, and technological advancements knocking at our door every day, we have to remember the bigger picture.Being abl...

Teaching critical thinking is the first step to media literacy in the digital age.

With varying perspectives, social channels, media outlets, and technological advancements knocking at our door every day, we have to remember the bigger picture.

Being able to have challenging conversations with people with opposing views and critically analyze information allows us to grow as marketers.

Joining our crucial conversation are Chris Davey and Bart Verhulst . Chris and Bart share findings from their extensive research into the importance of critical thinking and media literacy.

In this episode, we delve into advancing understanding in the digital age.

Join us as we discuss:

[9:37] The new age of information warfare

[15:12] Diversifying our information intake

[23:30] Balancing the “flavor” of AI

[37:35] How Universities can make a difference

Check out these resources we mentioned during the podcast:

Twin Crisis in Truth and Trust: A New Strategy for Higher Education

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Bart Verhulst on LinkedIn

[email protected]

Chrisdavey on X

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Why all 21st-century educators must teach media literacy & how

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From our  Educator Guest Blogger Series

With technology being an integral part of classrooms and students’ lives in general, I realize that my job as a teacher involves helping students successfully navigate the online world.

My goal this year is to help every student develop 21st-century skills, including being responsible users of technology and critical consumers of media they encounter., as a teacher reading this, you are likely integrating digital media in your classroom. i challenge you, too, in the new year to include media literacy as a part of your daily instruction. but you may wonder, “why should i be responsible for teaching media literacy, and how can i do it on top of an already packed curriculum”, why do all educators need to teach media literacy.

Linda Ellerbee, host of Nick News (1992-2015), said, “Media literacy is not just important, it's absolutely critical. It's going to make the difference between whether kids are a tool of the mass media or whether the mass media is a tool for kids to use.” In other words, do we want students to be manipulated by media, or do we want to empower them to use media? 

I firmly believe that it’s every teacher’s job to prepare students to become knowledgeable, productive 21st-century citizens. With tweens and teens spending an average of 6 and 9 hours respectively using media ( Common Sense Media , 2015) -- and that’s not including homework! --  it’s no longer a question of whether our students will be digital citizens, it’s whether they will be good digital citizens and digital leaders! With media literacy instruction they can be both!!

Media Literacy and 21st-Century Skills

Teaching media literacy provides students with skills that will help them foremost think critically about media. It also cultivates other 21st-century skills like creativity, collaboration, and communication, as well as increasing digital literacy skills through interacting with media, information, and technology. Media literacy instruction can also help your students develop into active consumers of information, determine credible sources, acknowledge biases in media, and be responsible creators of media.

Whether you teach science, English language arts, social studies or art, there is a place for the development of these skills in your instruction!

But HOW Can Educators Include Media Literacy as an Integral Part of Daily Instruction?!

The National Association of Media Literacy Education defines media literacy as “the ability to ACCESS, ANALYZE, EVALUATE, CREATE, & ACT using all forms of communication.” Let’s look at some ways educators can help students develop into media-literate individuals.

Access to Quality Sources. We need to ensure students can access quality sources that are current, reliable, and unbiased when they are interacting with media at school. 

• Provide students a curated collection of quality resources through links in their learning management systems or tools like Padlet or Waklet . 
• Provide access to quality content collections like Pebble Go , Epic !, and NewsELA .
• Teach older students strategies for searching for information. Reach out to your media specialist, and I’ll bet he or she will be happy to help you! 

Analyze/Evaluate Using Critical Thinking . But how do students know which sources are credible when the encounter them without our support? Whether they are watching YouTube, reading news, or analyzing images, students need skills to understand information, put it in context, and differentiate between real and fake. One way to do this is to teach students to ask questions when analyzing and evaluating media:

• Who is the author?
• What is its purpose? (inform, entertain, persuade)
• How might different people interpret this message?
• Are there certain groups of people being represented and/or excluded?
• Were certain details left out? Why?
• Also consider: Are sources cited? Are there grammar and spelling errors?

Additionally, giving students the time and opportunity to think for themselves and coaching them on how to ask questions is instrumental for them to learn to analyze and evaluate media on their own.

While teachers must explicitly provide students opportunities to think critically, the critical thinking involved in analyzing and evaluating digital resources should be routinely modeled through teacher think alouds, where students hear, see, and experience this type of thought process.

Creating Media Content . We want to shift from students being solely consumers to being creators who can express themselves through media. When students create media, especially with the questions for analyzing and evaluating in mind, it helps them to consider the impact their creations will have on their audience. Some quality tools for students to use for creating include Seesaw , Google Tools , Canva , Book Creator , and Meme Generator .

Distributing Created Messages Responsibly . Besides thinking critically about media, this is probably one of the most important parts of media literacy. We want students to be life-long learners prepared to internalize what they’ve learned about media and transfer it beyond the classroom, including monitoring themselves on social media, being critical of media before sharing it, and empowering them to create and share media responsibly! 

Media Literacy Resources to Try Tomorrow

While there are a plethora of resources for teaching media literacy, these tried-and-true resources should help you develop ideas to take back to your classroom and use immediately. 

SCETV/PBS Education Resources SCETV/PBS Pre-K-12 content like Knowitall, Learning Why, and PBS LearningMedia provide quality media and multimedia resources and lessons for SC students and teachers.  * Improve your media literacy knowledge and skills plus earn micro-credentials with FREE courses from PBS and KQED ! 

Common Sense Education Common Sense Education has free, comprehensive digital citizenship curriculums for K-12 students that include lessons on media literacy. 

Google Resources

• Be Internet Awesome , Google’s free digital safety curriculum, helps encourage students to be smart, alert, strong, kind, and brave when online, and has recently added some media literacy lessons. 
• Search Education  is a series of lessons to help you guide your students to use Google searches meaningfully in their schoolwork and beyond. Choose from Search Literacy lessons and A Google A Day classroom challenges.
• Reverse Image Search  can help students determine if images have been altered.

Other Useful Resources Interactives like Factitious and Bad News help students to better discriminate “fake news” and develop resistance against disinformation.

Ashley Fort’s goal is to help ALL students become empowered life-long learners who are confident 21st-century citizens, and to help teachers effectively leverage technology to enrich learning and increase student engagement. She serves as a digital learning coach for Batesburg-Leesville schools in Lexington County School District 3. Ashley holds a Bachelor of Arts in Early Childhood Education from the University of South Carolina, Aiken and a Master of Education in Teaching and Learning with a concentration in educational technology and online instruction in 2015 from Liberty University. 

In 2017, Ashley was named the PBS LearningMedia Digital Innovator for South Carolina for integrating STEAM into her daily instruction. In addition, she is a Google Certified Educator and Trainer, Common Sense Educator and Ambassador, Seesaw Ambassador, and Epic! Master Teacher. 

You can follow her on Twitter at @MrsAshleyBFort and on her website at www.mytechknowledgeyclassroom.com . To keep up with Lexington County School District Three’s innovative 1:1 initiative, follow @LexCounty_SD3 and #Lex3Grows.

* Be our next Guest Blogger! Learn more . 

Note: This guest blog does not necessarily reflect the views of ETV Education.

Today’s Two Important Skills: Digital Literacy and Critical Thinking

• First Online: 15 March 2023

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Akayoğlu, S., Satar, H. M., Dikilitaş, K., Cirit, N. C., & Korkmazgil, S. (2020). Digital literacy practices of Turkish pre-service EFL teachers. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 36 (1), 85–97.

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Aysu, S. (2023). Today’s Two Important Skills: Digital Literacy and Critical Thinking. In: Köksal, D., Ulum, Ö.G., Genç, G. (eds) Undividing Digital Divide. SpringerBriefs in Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25006-4_4

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Writing and Differentiated Instruction: Everything You Need to Know

Improving language proficiency and scientific literacy in learners, how to teach spelling: everything you need to know, product review of ticktalk 5, product review of the grid duffle backpack, product review of naturopathica’s active body bundle, the benefits of differentiated instruction: everything you need to know, teaching children inferential thinking: everything you need to know, why choose sharepoint learning management system, good readers and reading strategies: everything you need to know, utilizing critical thinking in the digital information age.

The digital information age has been one of the most defining moments of this century. People no longer wait for news and other programs to get knowledge as it previously was. You can now access whatever information you want using your phone. Over the years, digital devices have moved from large desktops to wearable technologies such assmart watches and smart glasses, with phones becoming increasingly versatile.

We are currently living in an era when information is widely available. Whenever people are faced with a question, their default response is ‘Google it’ rather than brainstorming for an answer. This contrasts sharply from what used to happen in the past whereby books were the main source of information.

The lack of a ready information portal in the past meant that studentslearnt to research for information and check on the authenticity of information before accepting it as the truth. There were also a few outlets where information was disseminated such asprint media, television, and radio. Information passing through these sources was equally verified.

In the current digital age, anyone can publish any information on their websites, social media platforms, and other inline forums. There is no standard for verifying the information. Unfortunately, those looking for similar information do not really check the authenticity of the information . As a result, propaganda and false information often gets construed as the truth thus causing decision-making problems.

Developing and utilizing critical thinking

Critical thinking involves conceptualizing the information, applying the information when problems, analyzing the information, and synthesizing it before making a final evaluation. It is only after all this that a logical conclusion can be made.Unfortunately, this lacks in the data age since answers are widely and readily available and there is no push to verify the source or even compare information.

There is a great need to enhance critical thinking, especially among students and the working class so that they can have quality and factual information as well as improve their mental ability to solve problems. Here are several ways to achieve this:

Determine The Motive Behind The Information

Most information found on the Internet has a hidden motive behind it. The companies and writers who put the information on the Internet were probably trying to sell something to the readers. Others are propagandists looking to influence a reader’s mode of thinking.

Despite the efforts by search engines to filter out websites that are sales oriented from the top ranks, lots of infomercials are stillmaking it to the top of SERPS. Online researchers must be taught to decipher the motive behind the information provided to differentiate authentic websites that are giving factual information from marketers.

Improving The Quality Of Research

The biggest problem with many researchers is relying on the first source they bum into as their core informational base. Whenever there is a problem that requires answers, it is essential that solutions are sought from at least three different sources. With comparison, it is easy to tell if the information from any of them is not factual. In-depth research also helps improve critical evaluation and comprehension.

Critical thinking helps us to think through problems and apply the right information when developing solutions. It is important that the digital age learns to differentiate factual and fake information. Moreover, it is good that information comes from various online and offline sources so that it is accurate and has enough facts.

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The Importance of Digital Literacy

By Steve Smith

The information presented here is true and accurate as of the date of publication. DeVry’s programmatic offerings and their accreditations are subject to change. Please refer to the current academic catalog for details.

June 28, 2024

What is digital literacy and why does it matter? While often taken for granted in today’s digitally connected world, digital literacy can make a significant difference in an individual’s ability to participate and prosper in modern society. 

In this article, we’ll highlight digital literacy’s characteristics and advantages, and define the ways that developing it can enhance our personal and professional lives. 

What Defines Digital Literacy?

The American Library Association (ALA) defines digital literacy as the ability to use information and communication technologies to find, evaluate, create and communicate information, requiring both cognitive and technical skills. 

The ALA goes on to define a digitally literate person as one who:

Is able to use diverse technologies appropriately and effectively to retrieve information, interpret results and judge the quality of that information

Understands the relationship between technology, life-long learning, personal privacy and stewardship of information

Uses these skills and the appropriate technology to communicate and collaborate with peers, colleagues, family and, on occasion, the general public

Uses these skills to actively participate in civic society and contribute to a vibrant, informed and engaged community

Why Is Digital Literacy Important?

Digital literacy goes beyond keeping up to date with the latest technology. The ability to adapt quickly to new apps or software is an essential skill in and of itself. As new tools, technologies and software are introduced into the ways we do business, those who take the time to keep pace can help position themselves to stand out among other candidates, especially in the eyes of future employers. It can also have significant effects on our ability to interact with the broader global community.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies reaffirms this, noting that, while basic literacy and numeracy remain fundamental to learning, digital literacy has emerged as a critical life skill that’s indispensable for every global citizen, especially in their ability to communicate, find employment, pursue education or socialize.

Your level of digital literacy can have a direct impact on your ability to search for and process information, create content, manage data and troubleshoot when things don’t operate as smoothly as they should. As our reliance on digital technology increases, basic technical skills and the willingness to continue learning can provide the agility to move purposefully through your personal and professional worlds.  

Accessing and evaluating information

Access to information is a crucial factor in the vitality of our lives, careers and communities, as are research skills. A digitally literate individual understands where to go and how to find the information they need online, whether it’s a quick search for a vendor in their neighborhood or a comprehensive analysis for their workplace. 

While knowing how to get information is good, ensuring the quality of information is essential. Two interrelated digital literacy competencies, media information literacy (MIL) and fact-checking, are important skills to develop. A person who is digitally literate must exercise their critical thinking skills and insist on only using information from credible sources. Websites like factcheck.org can help you figure out what is factual and what isn’t.   

Practicing online safety

Internet browsing has become the primary way we acquire information. In one way or another, this basic digital interaction allows us to inform and educate ourselves every day. Being digitally literate involves staying safe online and should be a priority for every individual at home and at work. Cyber security awareness and good cyber hygiene are useful skills for anyone but are absolutely hallmarks of the digitally literate individual. 

Communicating and collaborating

The importance of digital literacy in communication has never been more apparent, from our personal lives to our workplaces. Digital literacy plays a role in how we speak to each other online. Thanks to technology, we can communicate in more ways than ever, including emails, text messaging, chat or video calls. These, along with project management apps, allow us to work collaboratively and communicate clearly in an environment where body language, tone of voice or facial expression aren’t always present. Digital literacy also indicates that you can utilize different methods of communication for different audiences or purposes. 

Leveraging skills for employability

Businesses are using digital tools to keep the books, prepare tax returns, track revenues and expenses and manage workflows and other tasks with accuracy and ease. If you look at a typical online job listing, you’ll likely see a list of desired application or software skills, alongside any other technical qualifications for the job. 

Your digital literacy skills may add value to an organization and its teams. By listing your proficiency with various technologies on your resume or candidate profiles, you may help yourself stand out to potential employers. Being open to learning new tools may also assist you.  

Demonstrating critical thinking and problem solving skills

With strong digital proficiency, you may be able to assess and troubleshoot problems more readily, approach challenges more objectively and find more creative solutions to problems both at work and in your personal life.

Creating digital content

Content creation tools for research, writing, editing images and videos, podcasting and content planning are powerful, and knowing how to use them is an important skill. Digitally literate folks should also be aware that using generative artificial intelligence to create content potentially requires balancing convenience and utility with intellectual property and copyright implications. 

Pursuing Digital Literacy Through Education

When it comes down to it, a digitally literate person leverages digital technologies to meet strategic objectives. To learn how to do this, you can dedicate time to becoming more digitally literate on your own or find avenues to develop these skills through formal education. This is especially true if your career goals involve preparing to pursue management roles. 

Here at DeVry, our Bachelor’s Degree in Technical Management was developed with these goals  in mind. Combining the critical elements of business management with technology, you’ll explore how you can expand your existing digital literacy skills through data analysis, project management, information security and more. 

Align your education with your professional goals by choosing from 12 specializations in areas like Accounting, Global Supply Chain Management, Health Services Management, Information Technology-Networking Fundamentals, Sales and Marketing and Project Management to help you gain hands-on experience with the technologies and methodology specific to that industry. 

Explore Business Programs at DeVry

Whether you’re an experienced professional looking to change your trajectory, preparing to pursue management-level opportunities or are just getting starting on your education journey, DeVry and our Keller Graduate School of Management’s business degree programs can help you prepare for what’s next. 

Teaching through real-world scenarios, our experienced faculty will help you explore the concepts and methodologies used in dynamic business areas like marketing, finance, project management, accounting, human resources and more.  

Our Associate of Applied Science in Business , Bachelor of Science in Business Administration , Bachelor of Science in Business Management , Bachelor of Science in Technical Management and Master of Business Administration are accredited by the by the Accreditation Council for Business Schools and Programs (ACBSP) www.acbsp.org . 1 

Online learning here at DeVry can help you balance your education with other aspects of your busy life, and scholarship and grant opportunities may help make it more affordable. Connect with us today to find a program that fits your personal and professional goals.  

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Teaching Digital Citizenship Has a Real Impact

Media and technology play an increasingly important role in the lives of children and teens, bringing both opportunities and risks. When used effectively, technology can inform and educate, aid in identity development, inspire creativity, and connect kids with their communities and the broader world.

However, young people sometimes also struggle with the downsides that are part ofa culture of ubiquitous technology, from negative impacts on sleep and physical activity to technology addiction, privacy concerns, exposure to harmful content, hate speech, mis- and disinformation, and impacts on their mental health. And today, a significant amount of young people's social interactions, identity development, and learning happen online, unlike in previous generations.

Common Sense's mission grew out of the belief that all kids can thrive in a tech-filled world if we prioritize (among several things), teaching kids the skills and dispositions to use tech in meaningful, responsible, and prosocial ways. So over 12 years ago, we developed the first Digital Literacy & Citizenship Curriculum aimed to do exactly that.

Today, we reach 1.2 million educators in 88,000 schools across the United States, including 80% of Title I schools. Internationally, we reach 4,900 schools, with one-fifth of our educator audience from regions around the globe.

Last year, we decided to dive into what we've learned about the impact of our Digital Citizenship Program by looking at three core areas: how schools implement our Digital Citizenship Curriculum, how schools are engaging parents and caregivers, and the impact on student learning.

Here are some highlights of what we learned:

Digital citizenship is most often taught because it aligns with the school's mission, or with social and emotional learning (SEL), and/or because of concerns about online privacy, sharing, and cyberbullying.

The content is most often taught by veteran classroom teachers, librarians/media specialists, technology coordinators, and instructional coaches, and is used most often in grades 3–6.

When educators were asked about the top behaviors they most wanted students to develop as a result of digital citizenship education, respondents reported that they most hoped to achieve awareness about sharing information online, safeguarding data privacy, and reducing cyberbullying.

Ninety-four percent of students feel confident in understanding the lessons, and 93% of educators report that their students have learned digital citizenship skills by using our Digital Citizenship Curriculum.

Through our Recognition program (a subset of our users who commit to a deep implementation of the Curriculum), we certify roughly 5,000 educators, 1,500 schools, 40 districts, and 150 Ambassadors each year.

Through the extended outreach of our Recognition community we reach an estimated 3.8 million students and 850,000 families.

The findings from our impact report show great promise and potential for digital citizenship education and the impact of our Digital Citizenship Curriculum. Educators who use the curriculum have come to rely on our resources to teach these critical skills, and students are learning the right skills and dispositions to participate responsibly in the digital world.

As the media and tech landscape continues to evolve, so do the needs and priorities of schools and districts. Whether it's new topics and trends that arise ( hello, artificial intelligence !) or shifts in priorities and programming for schools (e.g., the need for shorter, more student-directed lessons, or the emphasis on SEL), we continue to create new, relevant digital citizenship resources that are meant to expand our flagship curriculum and offer additional entry points for educators.

By addressing the real-life challenges that students face today, we are equipping them with the skills and dispositions they need to succeed as digital learners, leaders, and citizens of tomorrow.

Read the full impact report here .

Eisha Buch is the Head of Teaching & Learning at Common Sense Education. She oversees Common Sense's K–12 Digital Citizenship Program. Eisha is the lead architect of the Curriculum and has extensive experience in developing research-based curriculum, games, and education programs to ensure the digital well-being of all students. 

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Opinion | How PolitiFact and others are preparing for tonight’s presidential debate

27 staffers from politifact will fact-check the candidates in real time and publish their findings in two languages.

Katie Sanders is editor-in-chief of Poynter’s PolitiFact, the Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-checking website that rates the accuracy of claims by elected officials and others.

So, of course, she will be watching tonight’s big presidential debate between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. But she will have to be up at 3 a.m. to do it.

That’s because this debate coverage is a bit different for PolitiFact. Sanders and others from the PolitiFact and Poynter staff are at the 11th annual GlobalFact conference in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina. But even halfway around the world, Sanders is leading up the effort to cover one of the most important presidential debates in our lifetime, and one that surely will have fact-checkers furiously working to dig into the claims of the two candidates.

And, it should be mentioned, this debate is a bit different, too. There will be no live audience. Microphones will supposedly be cut off if the candidates get unruly. And it’s June — nearly five months before the election and before either party has had their national convention.

On Wednesday, Sanders and I exchanged several messages over Slack and email. Here’s a portion of our conversation about how PolitiFact will handle tonight’s debate.

Tom Jones: What is PolitiFact’s plan for covering tonight’s debate? How many people will be covering it and what do you have in store for your audience?

Katie Sanders: The overall plan is ambitious and involves 27 people — that’s definitely a record. That’s the PolitiFact staff plus two more people joining from KFF Health News to help us cover health-related claims. We will cover the debate in several formats and two languages, adding in Spanish.

For the political junkies, we will offer real-time fact-checking as the debate goes on on a politifact.com live blog. We will outline a comprehensive story outlining the most significant claims of the night. That is probably the biggest and most involved endeavor. We expect the story to cover a lot of ground; in 2020 it had more than 30 claims following one debate. This is great for anybody who wants to wake up and filter out the spin while learning about what was discussed.

PolitiFact en Español, a team of four people, will focus on producing a story in Spanish and recording videos to distribute across social media channels with key claims, including our growing WhatsApp channel.

We’re excited about the partnerships we’ve established to distribute this coverage. We have local and national TV, digital and print partners who will carry this coverage in one way or another either through running our story or doing interviews with our team through Friday. We’re blogging with ABC News and FiveThirtyEight, and are working with PBS digital, too.

Jones: Having a debate in June is unusual. We’ve never had one this early and it came together very quickly. How long have you been able to prepare and what has that preparation looked like?

Sanders: A June debate was definitely not in the cards when we were outlining the cadence of the year. The debate was announced shortly before we held a team retreat in Washington, D.C., where we were brainstorming how we could reimagine our debate coverage from previous cycles. That dominated the conversation and gave everyone a clear idea of what to work on in the weeks ahead. It’s no surprise to anyone who’s been on our website lately; we have been trying to rate as many Trump and Biden claims as possible that we think may come up.

Just to get into the nitty-gritty, everyone has a specific job that they’re being asked to do before the debate, during the debate and after the debate. We’ve had several meetings to go over who is responsible for what.

Jones: Finally, with both candidates answering questions and reeling off a bunch of claims quickly, how can you possibly fact-check in real time?

Sanders: It can be overwhelming to fact-check in real time, I’m not going to lie. Especially with these two candidates, they are going to be feisty. But the secret that is not really a secret is that politicians like to repeat themselves when they get on the big stage. Our experience from covering Republican primary debates last fall and dozens of presidential primary and general debates over the years is that they will bring up some claims we have fact-checked before. So it is not magic. Doing this “live” is built on a foundation of intensive research and interviews with subject matter experts that can take days, per claim.

My thanks to Katie Sanders, and now on with more debate and media news …

Debate the Times

The New York Times shared its plans for tonight’s debate, writing that “60 Times journalists will be on hand Thursday night to offer context, insight, photos, reactions and fact-checking.” That included 29 reporters who will be fact-checking the candidates.

Meanwhile, look for fact-checking from most national news outlets. That includes CBS, where Major Garrett will fact-check the debate under the CBS News Confirmed banner. CBS News launched the CBS News Confirmed unit late last year and it will eventually include a show on CBS News’ streaming network.

Getting ready

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Rodney Ho reports that CNN moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash have been in Atlanta since Sunday, rehearsing for tonight’s debate. In addition, CNN boss Mark Thompson is in Atlanta to oversee the debate.

Ho writes that the network is prepped for various technical issues.

Alexa Bennewitz, CNN’s special director of special events, told Ho, “We have redundancies across the board. Cameras. Microphones. The smallest details. We have a backup generator. And we have three flavors of transmission: fiber, internet and satellite.”

The moderators

We’ve been writing about it all week. How much pressure will be on CNN moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash? The Trump campaign already has laid plenty of groundwork that the debate is going to be biased against their candidate, constantly and consistently alleging that Bash and, especially, Tapper are anti-Trump.

Tapper and Bash haven’t done any interviews, but you would guess they are aware of what’s being said, particularly from the Trump side. They are pros, so you can expect they will conduct a fair debate. But might there be, perhaps even subconsciously, moments when they try to dispel any accusations of being pro-Biden by being extra tough with him?

Again, you would like to believe they will shut out any outside noise and run a fair debate.

Deadline’s Ted Johnson wrote , “… they will be under intense scrutiny not just from Trump and the right, but from Biden and others on the left. With the 90-minute runtime, every question asked will leave out ones not asked, displeasing some constituency. Any fact-checks will be weighed against moments where there were none at all.”

Here’s a clip of CNN’s Phil Mattingly giving viewers a preview of how tonight’s debate is scheduled to go. It includes an explanation of how the microphones will work. And, at least based on the clip, it will be rather difficult for a candidate whose microphone is shut off to be heard by the TV audience.

Media moves

Semafor’s Max Tani writes about several high-profile staffers on the move from Politico, including its popular media writer, Jack Shafer.

Tani reports that Alex Ward, who shared the byline on Politico’s big-time scoop about the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, is leaving for The Wall Street Journal along with Pentagon reporter Lara Seligman.

Tani writes that Shafer “confirmed to Semafor that he is also leaving amid the company’s waning interest in media coverage.”

Shafer told Tani, “I had a really good run with a long leash at Politico and appreciate all the great people I worked with. But the job has changed in recent months and I think it’s best for me to hit the ground dancing someplace else where media criticism is important to the mix.”

Sports broadcaster Al Michaels, shown here in 2023. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Here’s something new, very interesting and, well, perhaps a bit troubling. For this summer’s Paris Olympics, NBC’s Peacock is going to use artificial intelligence technology for something called “Your Daily Olympic Recap on Peacock.” It will be a personalized round-up of the previous day’s top moments from the Olympics.

Now here’s where the AI part comes in. The segments will be moderated by legendary announcer Al Michaels. But it won’t actually be Michaels; it will be his voice as generated by AI.

Here’s what it sounds like.

Naturally, Michaels, one of the greatest announcers in sports history, had reservations about the whole deal. He told Tom Kludt in a piece for Vanity Fair that he was “very skeptical.” Then he heard what it would sound like.

Michaels said, “Frankly, it was astonishing. It was amazing. And it was a little bit frightening. … It was not only close, it was almost 2% off perfect. I’m thinking, ‘Whoa.’”

Kludt wrote, “I heard it for myself in a demonstration provided by NBC last week, and sure enough, it sounded like the real Al Michaels.”

It does to a point. I’ve listened and I think it sounds just the slightest touch off — but maybe that’s because I knew it was AI when I heard it. If I didn’t know, would I have noticed? Maybe not. Actually, probably not if I’m being honest.

Michaels said, “They were able to do exactly what I might — I shouldn’t say ‘exactly,’ it sounded like what I might say in certain situations.”

Kludt wrote, “The feature … will pull from thousands of hours of live coverage from the Games in Paris using a large language model, or an LLM. The model analyzes subtitles and metadata to summarize clips from NBC’s Olympics coverage, and then adapts those summaries to fit Michaels’s signature style. The resulting text is then fed to a voice AI model — based on Michaels’s previous NBC appearances — that was trained to learn the unique pronunciations and intonations of certain words and phrases. In the end, this multilayered process will yield around 10 minutes’ worth of highlights for each user.”

Kludt adds, “NBC says that there could be nearly 7 million personalized variants of the recaps, and that a team of human editors will review the content before it is released to users. (That layer of quality control will be especially important when it comes to the pronunciation of the athletes’ names.)”

John Jelley, senior vice president of product and user experience at Peacock, told Kludt that the scale of the Olympics — more than 300 events over 32 sports — made it the place to try this technology.

The Athletic’s Richard Deitsch wrote , “The recap will be available to Peacock subscribers starting July 27 at www.peacocktv.com/olympics on all supported web browsers as well as on the Peacock app on select mobile and tablet devices. There is a brief set of questions to set up an individual recap based on a consumer’s preferences about the sports they like and highlights they want. (Michaels greets you by name.)”

Jelley told Kludt, “It would be impossible to deliver a personalized experience with a legendary sportscaster to millions of fans without it.”

The whole personalized highlight package is a huge innovation. Still, the AI-generated voice replacing an actual human is making some people squirm.

Awful Announcing’s Joe Lucia wrote , “The idea of personalized recaps is pretty cool. Pick your sports and topics and see daily recaps for what you chose? That’s awesome! Having those personalized highlights narrated by an auto-generated version of Al Michaels? Eh, maybe that’s a step too far, especially when NBC is touting over 150 broadcasters covering the Paris Games for the network.”

One would assume Michaels is being compensated, and that might make using his voice a bit easier to stomach for those who might have issues with all of this.

Media tidbits

• The Wall Street Journal’s Ann M. Simmons with “Falsely Accused Wall Street Journal Reporter Evan Gershkovich in Court for Start of Secret Russian Trial.”
• Reporting from GlobalFact 11 in Sarajevo, Poynter’s Angela Fu with “‘You are the target’: What it’s like to fact-check a war.”
• Also from GlobalFact 11, Poynter’s Loreben Tuquero with “Nobel laureate Maria Ressa tells tech companies: Now is the time to ‘do something.’”
• For The New York Times Magazine, Jonathan Mahler with “The Long, Strange Road to Alec Baldwin’s Manslaughter Trial.”
• The Los Angeles Times’ Thomas Curwen with “He crossed the Atlantic solo in a boat he built himself.”

More resources for journalists

• Get an AI ethics framework for your newsroom. Start here.
• Will Work for Impact brings investigations to life.
• Work-Life Chemistry six-week newsletter course: Ditch work-life balance for a more sustainable approach.

Have feedback or a tip? Email Poynter senior media writer Tom Jones at [email protected] .

The Poynter Report is our daily media newsletter. To have it delivered to your inbox Monday-Friday, sign up here .

Populism is a major threat to democracy, political scientist Steven Levitsky warns

An independent press is critical to sustaining democracy, says the Harvard professor

Fact-checkers from Turkey, India and Georgia win GlobalFact 11 awards

Turkish outlet Teyit won the Highest Impact award for its work investigating Palestinian land sales to Israelis

‘Frenemies’: The complicated relationship between fact-checkers and tech giants like Meta and TikTok

Many fact-checking outlets are financially dependent on the very platforms that they criticize

Opinion | Media reaction to the newsworthy first presidential debate

Joe Biden had a bad night. That was the story from Thursday’s debate — not anything Trump said, whether it was true or not.

Two years after an open letter to YouTube, fact-checkers remain dissatisfied with the platform’s inaction

YouTube has been dogged by the same problems fact-checkers raised years ago

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In this section.

The JPM Research Group: Revolutionizing tomorrows materials today

The JPM Research Group at Penn State, led by Jon-Paul Maria, professor of materials science and engineering, continues to be at the forefront of research, pushing the boundaries of what is possible. The group’s pioneering work in not just one, but two, significant areas of research entropy-stabilized ceramics and a new class of ferroelectrics, built on shattering a seventy-five-year-old belief on the limits of ferroelectrics—has established entirely new families of materials and functionalities.

The group is a supportive community of undergraduate and graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and visiting scholars, who work together on cutting-edge research projects. They specialize in the synthesis, characterization, and application of advanced materials for computer processing and energy storage, for infrared light detection and emission, for future quantum information science applications, and for stability under extreme environments.  Read more

Penn State launches Silicon Carbide Innovation Alliance

Silicon carbide innovation alliance to drive industrial-scale semiconductor work.

Known for its ability to withstand extreme environments and high voltages, silicon carbide (SiC) is a semiconducting material made up of silicon and carbon atoms arranged into crystals that is increasingly becoming essential to modern technologies like electric vehicles, renewable energy systems, telecommunications infrastructure and microelectronics.   

To advance the potential of this semiconductor, Penn State recently launched the Silicon Carbide Innovation Alliance (SCIA) , a coalition of industry leaders, academic institutions and government support with a focus on becoming the nation's central hub for research, development and workforce training in silicon SiC crystal technology.  Read more

Penn State, Morgan Advanced Materials partner to improve semiconductor materials

Penn State and Morgan Advanced Materials have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to catalyze research and development of silicon carbide, known as SiC, a semiconductor material that operates more efficiently at high voltages than competing technologies. This agreement includes a new five-year, multimillion-dollar initiative and a commitment by Morgan to become a founding member of the recently launched Penn State Silicon Carbide Innovation Alliance, as well as to supply the graphite materials and solutions needed for SiC development to Penn State for use by internal and external partners. Read more

Penn State and onsemi partner to boost silicon carbide research in the U.S.

Penn State and onsemi, a leader in intelligent power and sensing technologies, have announced the signing of a memorandum of understanding toward an $8 million strategic collaboration that includes the establishment of the onsemi Silicon Carbide Crystal Center (SiC3) at Penn State’s Materials Research Institute. Over the next 10 years, onsemi will fund SiC3 with $800,000 per year.  Read more

MatSE welcomes Assistant Professor Carlos Lopez

MatSE welcomed Carlos Lopez as a new assistant professor in January.

Lopez’s research focuses on the structure and rheology of various soft matter systems, including polyelectrolyte solutions, poly (ionic liquid) gels, and soft colloidal dispersions.

"I am pleased to announce the addition of Dr. Carlos Lopez to our department," said Susan Sinnott, head and professor of materials science and engineering.  Read more

From the Department Head

This spring, MatSE awarded forty-six bachelor of science degrees to a unique group of students—the class of 2024. These were our COVID-19 pandemic students, who missed traditional high school graduation ceremonies and began their college careers during one of the most uncertain times in recent history.

Today’s undergraduate students possess unique skills resulting from their experiences with blended in-person and online education. Many have refined their time management skills, adapted to learning and working in different formats, and have experience in collaborating virtually. From virtual learning platforms to AI-driven tools, they have navigated an ever-evolving digital landscape. These students are passionate about social justice, climate change, and inclusivity. Many have entrepreneurial ambitions, and their ability and drive to innovate set them apart. Mental health awareness has also been a priority to them, and their empathy and compassion stand out.  Read more

"Explore your future" video released

MatSE at Penn State is an international leader in materials education and research. As a top-ranked program, the department thrives on a rich collaboration between faculty, staff, students, and researchers to promote a well-rounded academic experience and innovative research opportunities. Our department offers ABET-accredited degree programs at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. View video

MatSE 115th Anniversary Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Fund successfully endowed

MatSE is proud to announce that we have achieved our fundraising goal for the 115th Anniversary DEI initiative and the fund will be endowed!  With the help of leadership gift commitments from Paul Robertson and Alexandra Lee, Joel and Kim Reed, Larry and Beth Hancock, Melissa and Leif Hockstad, as well as individual contributions from alumni, faculty, and friends, this fund will now exist in perpetuity.  Read more

Penn State's research expenditures reach record $1.239 billion

Penn State’s total research expenditures reached a record high of $1.239 billion in fiscal year 2022-23, a 14%* increase from the previous year and driven by a $98 million jump in federal funding for research — by far the largest in the University’s history. This funding enables Penn State faculty, staff and students to conduct cutting-edge research and drive innovation that positively impact people’s lives, both locally and around the globe.  Read more

Dual-energy harvesting device could power future wireless medical implants

Implantable biomedical devices — like pacemakers, insulin pumps and neurostimulators — are becoming smaller and utilizing wireless technology, but hurdles remain for powering the next-generation implants. A new wireless charging device developed by Penn State scientists could dramatically improve powering capability for implants while still being safe for our bodies, the researchers said. Read more

Method for producing sulfur compounds in cells shows promise for tissue repair

Sulfur-based compounds produced in our bodies help fight inflammation and create new blood vessels, among other responsibilities, but the compounds are delicate and break down easily, making them difficult to study. A team led by Penn State scientists have developed a new method to generate the compounds — called polysulfides — inside of cells, and the work could potentially lead to advances in wound treatment and tissue repair.  Read more

‘Surprising’ hidden activity of semiconductor material spotted by researchers

New research suggests that materials commonly overlooked in computer chip design actually play an important role in information processing, a discovery which could lead to faster and more efficient electronics. Using advanced imaging techniques, an international team led by Penn State researchers found that the material that a semiconductor chip device is built on, called the substrate, responds to changes in electricity much like the semiconductor on top of it.  Read more

GAP funding paves the way for research to move from lab to market

Four projects were recently awarded Penn State Commercialization GAP funding. The GAP Fund, formerly known as the Fund for Innovation, aims to accelerate the development of promising research across the University by closing the funding gaps between proof-of-concept research and readiness for commercialization.  Read more

Q&A: Enhancing defense readiness with renewable energy and sensor materials

Penn State has been selected by the Department of Defense (DoD) as a partner for two of the four newly created DoD research centers of excellence. The DoD awarded a total of $40 million to establish the four centers at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) and Minority-serving Institutions (MI), which will conduct research over a five-year period in technology areas deemed critical by the DoD.   Read more

Undergraduate Students

Two MatSE undergraduates receive Erickson Discovery Grants

The Erickson Discovery Grant, which funds independent research projects for undergraduate students, has been awarded to 43 recipients this year. 

The Rodney A. Erickson Grant program is administered by the Office of Undergraduate Education and is designed to support undergraduate student engagement in original research, scholarship and creative work under the supervision of a research mentor. Students may use the grant to cover living expenses and project costs like supplies and travel.  Read more

Mervosh named spring 2024 Earth and Mineral Sciences marshal

Michael Mervosh has been named Penn State's College of Earth and Mineral Sciences’ student marshal, the top graduate overall; and Brenden Franks has been named the college’s science honor marshal, the top graduate in a non-engineering discipline. 

Mervosh earned his bachelor’s degree in materials science and engineering. He will be graduating summa cum laude with a 4.0 cumulative grade-point average. Read more

Undergraduate Research Award: Excellence in Information Literacy

Penn State Libraries presented its seventh annual Undergraduate Research Award: Excellence in Information Literacy honors at the end of the spring 2024 semester.

Vyom Mehta, undergraduate students, materials science and engineering, was the fall 2023 EMS Library winner for “Platinum: Insights into the Hydrogen-based Solution for the Fossil Fuel Problem.” Read more

Graduate Students

Journey in glass takes ems doctoral student to japan.

When Katelyn Kirchner arrived at Penn State seven years ago as an undergraduate studying materials science and engineering, glass was for windows.

“I remember being in a first-year seminar class and my professor, Carlo Pantano, talked about a material that looks like a cotton ball except it’s borate glass that you can put in a bullet wound to clot blood and prevent critical blood loss,” Kirchner said. “When I was thinking of glass, I was thinking about windows, not advanced biomaterials.” Read more

Rebecca Welch receives Graduate Student Excellence in Mentoring Award

Rebecca Welch, doctoral student, was one of forty Penn State graduate students named as recipients of Penn State’s most prestigious annual graduate student recognition awards, administered by the Graduate School in collaboration with several Penn State units. The awards recognize and celebrate graduate students excelling in teaching, research and service, and other academic pursuits.  Read more

Clive Randall named Evan Pugh University Professor

Clive Randall, distinguished professor of materials science and engineering and director of the Materials Research Institute at Penn State, has been named an Evan Pugh University Professor. The Evan Pugh University Professorship is the highest distinction bestowed upon faculty by Penn State. Read more

Penn State announces tenure-line faculty promotions

Douglas E. Wolfe , Department of Materials Science and Engineering, College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, promoted to professor at Penn State, effective July 1, 2024.

Wenjie Li is promoted to associate research professor and receives Roy Award

Wenjie Li , Department of Materials Science and Engineering, College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, has been promoted to associate research professor (non-tenure-line faculty) at Penn State, effective July 1, 2024.

Li received the 2023 Rustum and Della Roy Innovation in Materials Research Award presented by the Materials Research Institute (MRI) and recognizes recent interdisciplinary materials research at Penn State that yields innovative and unexpected results.

Danielle Reifsnyder Hickey awarded American Chemical Society grant

Danielle Reifsnyder Hickey, assistant professor of chemistry and of materials science and engineering at Penn State, has been awarded an American Chemical Society (ACS) Petroleum Research Fund (PRF) Doctoral New Investigator Grant for $110,000 to support her research on catalysis — the acceleration of chemical reactions — at the atomic scale. Read more

Ismaila Dabo to depart from Penn State

Ismaila Dabo, associate professor of materials science and engineering and of physics, is leaving Penn State. On July 1, 2024, he will begin his new role in graduate strategic initiatives at Carnegie Mellon University. Dabo will be working on developing a master’s degree program in machine learning and computational materials science between Carnegie Mellon University - Africa and Carnegie Mellon University - Pittsburgh.  

The MatSE family extends our warmest congratulations and best wishes to him and his family on this new venture.

Alumni Spotlight: Parallel Journeys

Meet two MatSE alumni, Matt Agboola and Nathan Banner. Currently, both are pursuing Ph.Ds. in different fields and at different universities—one in applied physics and data science at Harvard University and one in materials science and engineering at Penn State—but along the way, their journeys have shared a great deal in common.  View video

Moffatt-Fairbanks named MatSE Alumna of the Year

The 2024 MatSE Alumna of the Year was awarded to Dawne M. Moffatt-Fairbanks, director of Thermal and Materials Engineering, Manufacturing Technology and Engineering at Corning Incorporated.  Read more

2024 Distinguished Lecture Series awards recipients 

The Distinguished Lecture Series in Materials Science and Engineering at Penn State is comprised of three award lectures including two awards for the Richard E. Tressler Award Lecture in Materials and one award for the David Ford McFarland Award Lecture for Achievement in Metallurgy. The awards are bestowed on Penn State Alumni who have honorably distinguished themselves in materials science. Award recipients are invited to the University Park campus each spring to receive their award and present a lecture to the materials community.  Read more  

2024 Spring MatSE Awards Celebration 

This year marked the twenty-second annual MatSE Awards Celebration recognizing the achievements of MatSE students, staff, faculty, and alumni whose contributions continue to make MatSE a top-ranked materials science and engineering program.  Read more

2024 MatSE Spring Awards Celebration

This year marked the twenty-second annual MatSE Awards Celebration which recognized the achievements of MatSE students, staff, faculty, and alumni whose contributions continue to make MatSE a top-ranked materials science and engineering program. The event was also an occasion for MatSE to express appreciation for the generous support received throughout the year from alumni, friends, and partners. It is their generosity that is critical in furthering the MatSE mission. View video

Recording from the 2024 Annual MatSE Awards Celebration held on April 11, 2024.

2023-24 MatSE Memories

This academic year has given us many things to celebrate in the MatSE at Penn State. Here is a look back at some of the great times the MatSE family has shared during the 2023-24 academic year. View video

Faculty and student excellence celebrated at EMS annual awards celebration

Penn State's College of Earth and Mineral Sciences (EMS) recognized exceptional students and faculty for their academic excellence, service and leadership during its annual Wilson Awards Celebration, held on Sunday, April 24. The Wilson Awards are named in honor of Matthew and Anne Wilson, major benefactors of the college. Read more

Winners announced for 16th annual Materials Visualization Competition

The winners of the 16th annual Materials Visualization Competition (MVC), a scientific visual and artistic competition sponsored by the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (MatSE) and the Materials Research Institute (MRI) at Penn State, have been announced. MVC celebrates the quality of research in materials at Penn State and promotes awareness of materials science through visualization.  Read more

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This publication is available in alternative media on request. Penn State is an equal opportunity, affirmative action employer, and is committed to providing employment opportunities to all qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability or protected veteran status. UBR EMS 24-81