The purpose of media literacy education
is to develop
the "habits of inquiry" and "skills of expression"
needed
to be critical & creative thinkers, effective communicators, and active citizens
in today's world.
                                                                                                                                          -- adapted from NAMLE Core Principles for Media Literacy Education in the U.S. (2007)

Inquiry-Based
Media Literacy Education

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Based on NAMLE's question grid - part of their Core Principles for Media Literacy Education in the U.S.).  The specific questions in the grid are suggestions - intended to be adapted or changed entirely to meet students' developmental levels and your learning goals.  The important thing is the category - there are far more questions possible than can be listed in the grid.  Those included in the grid are common springboards - useful for sparking more questions; you'll nearly always be asking more than one question in a category.  Note that not all questions will apply to every media message, nor do they have to be asked in any fixed order.   And questions will often have more than one answer.  To help students develop the habit of giving evidence-based answers, nearly every questions should be followed with a probe for evidence: HOW DO YOU KNOW? or WHAT MAKES YOU THINK THAT?  And remember that the ultimate goal is for students to learn to ask these questions for themselves.  When they do, your classroom will come alive with divergent thinking, critical engagement, and respectful discussion. 

For a detailed explanation of why these ten categories, see pp. 38-47 in The Teacher's Guide to Media Literacy. FOR THE FULL GRID, CLICK THE PICTURE. 

Selected Publications

"Ask: Don't Tell: Pedagogy for Media Literacy in the Next Decade"  in the Journal for Media Literacy Education 3:1 (2011)
Media literacy is a quirky thing. Despite decades of scholarship on how to teach media literacy and NAMLE’s name change that added the word “education,” media literacy conferences don’t sound like education conferences. Attendees are more likely to hear hallway conversations about media effects than effective teaching strategies. Conversations about rubrics, or curriculum scope and sequence are relatively rare. Often political objectives are articulated more clearly than learning objectives...

The way we talk about things influences the way we think about them, and the way that other people respond (or not) to what we say. Much of media literacy has drawn its language from the field of communications. We talk about things like “production values” and how “audiences negotiate meaning.” This language is both useful and logical for people focusing on media, but to succeed in schools, we need to also use language and framing that are more familiar and inviting to teachers.Consider, for example, how teachers might respond if, rather than describing media literacy with a definition about accessing, analyzing, understanding, and producing media, we said, “media literacy education is about teaching students to ask – and find answers to – important questions.” This phrasing puts teaching and students, rather than media, at the center of the dis-course...

​In 1998, Renee Hobbs famously summarized seven major debates in media literacy. Many of those debates have now been settled. Ten years from now the major fault lines may very well be between those who look at media literacy as being primarily about analyzing and making media and those who look at media literacy as literacy.

"Terrain in Transition: Reflections on the Pedagogy of Media Literacy Education" in Media Literacy: Transforming Curriculum and Teaching (National Society for the Study of Education Yearbook, January 2005)
EXCERPT: "Educators cannot succeed by simply reporting [to their students] the conclusions of researchers, media analysts, or cultural critics who suggest that audiences are being manipulated by media.  Because this approach does not provide students with any sense of agency, such instruction often leaves students cynical rather than skeptical...
    ...creating media literacy techniques based primarily on a concern about media impact is essentially a Puritan approach in which children are viewed as inherently weak and prone to sin, and the goal of education is to save kids from themselves.  Progressive education suggests a different model, where students are presumed to have ability and the goal of education is to develop that ability...
    ...Teaching students to be critical of media is not the same as teaching them to think critically."

Shifting from Media to Literacy: The Challenges of Media Literacy Education in American Behavioral Science (Summer 2004)
EXCERPT: "In the United States, media literacy has often been more about "media" than about "literacy." Researchers have focused on media effects.  Theoreticians have engaged in cultural criticism.  And the few educators who looked to that scholarship as a guide generally saw it as their job to disseminate information about the potential or actual dangers of media.  Predictably, that version of media literacy never succeeded in winning broad acceptance in U.S. classrooms, not because it did not provide valuable information or insight, but rather, because pedagogically speaking, its approach was fatally flawed.
    The most serious disconnect came from researchers or media analysts who, because they believed that media caused harm, suggested that responsible adults keep children away from media; hence initiatives such as TV Turnoff Week.  This kind of change in behavior might make sense in a medical model, but it makes no sense in an educational model.  Educators know that we cannot make people print literate by keeping them away from books.  Likewise you cannot make people media literate by keeping them away from media..."

Patience is Virtue When You've Got What You Want: Excerpts from Opening Remarks at the National Media Education Conference, Baltimore, June 2003 in Telemedium (Summer 2004)
EXCERPT:  "We now live in a world that requires a counterbalance to media power.  In the long run, the most effective counterbalance will be media literacy education.  You can't have democracy without media, but if citizens don't have the skills to make media and think critically about it, they cannot preserve democracy.
    If that sounds like a lofty position - to say that media literacy education is essential to democracy - it is.  It is also the truth.  That is why the AMLA [now NAMLE] and the work of each and every media literacy educator is so important."

Reviews

See reviews on Amazon by the Media Literacy Education Maven (aka, Faith Rogow) for these books:
Frank Baker's MEDIA LITERACY IN THE K-12 CLASSROOM
David Buckingham's THE MATERIAL CHILD
Vanessa Domine's RETHINKING TECHNOLOGY IN SCHOOLS
Steve Goodman's TEACHING YOUTH MEDIA
Lisa Guernsey/Michael Levine's TAP, CLICK, READ
Melissa Hart's MEDIA LITERACY - GRADES 7-8
Renee Hobbs' DIGITAL AND MEDIA LITERACY
Renee Hobbs & David Cooper Moore's DISCOVERING MEDIA LITERACY
Heidi Hayes Jacobs' MASTERING MEDIA LITERACY
Diane Levin's BEYOND REMOTE CONTROLLED-CHILDHOOD
Gail Lovely & Gayle Berthiamume's USING AN IPAD WITH YOUR PRESCHOOLER
John McManus' DETECTING BULL
Karen Nemeth's and Fran Simon's DIGITAL DECISIONS
James Potter's INTRODUCTION TO MEDIA LITERACY
Nick Pernisco's PRACTICAL MEDIA LITERACY
Brian Puerling's TEACHING IN THE DIGITAL AGE
Art Silverblatt's MEDIA LITERACY: KEYS TO INTERPRETING MEDIA MESSAGES
Vivian Vasquez's and Carol Felderman's TECHNOLOGY AND CRITICAL LITERACY IN EARLY CHILDHOOD

More Resources

Becoming a Great Media Literacy Teacher -
a Listmania reading list.


TO CONTACT FAITH

A "how to" for independent thinking

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HERE'S WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ABOUT TGML:

"masterful.  This book should be USED by teachers everywhere." - Elizabeth Thoman, Founder, Center For Media Literacy

"the quintessential road map for understanding media literacy and its place in 21st century classrooms." - Frank Baker, Media Literacy Clearinghouse

"Scheibe and Rogow's book arrives at a moment when technology and educational thinking has finally converged.  It should be read by everyone interested in improving our schools." - Milton Chen, Senior Fellow & Executive Director Emeritus, The George Lucas Educational Foundation

"Librarians and teachers will find this resource invaluable as they begin to incorporate Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts into their curriculum." - Melanie Lewis, Coordinator of Learning Resources, Liberty High School (Madera, CA) / Library Media Connection review

"Scheibe and Rogow make it seem not only obvious but natural to include media literacy education at all levels of teaching and learning today." - Sister Rose Pacatte, Director, Pauline Center for Media Studies

From the Midwest Book Review's Internet Bookwatch:
The Teacher's Guide to Media Literacy: Critical Thinking in a Multimedia World asks what literacy actually means in the modern world, and how these skills can blend media literacy across the curriculum.  Dozens of suggested activities compliment examples of teaching strategies, lessons and approaches to building media literacy, providing a title that shows how to teach critical thinking skills and how to help students associate school learning with their lives.  Chapters are packed with self-reflection exercises, terms, classroom-tested lesson plans for different approaches to media literacy, and more.  Highly recommended for any concerned with the wider applications of media literacy!

Excerpts: The Teacher's Guide to Media Literacy

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"what most distinguishes The Teacher's Guide to Media Literacy from [other media literacy] works is that while they focus on how to teach media literacy, we focus on using media literacy to teach."

"In classroom after classroom, media literacy has demonstrated a power to reach all kinds of students, even those who have been uninterested in school.  It is much more than a response to changing technologies; it is a vital and effective way to create a culture of inquiry in U.S. schools and meet today's most pressing educational needs."

"media literacy isn't about automatically championing new technologies; rather, it is a way to help students who live in a technology dependent world regain the power that traditional literacy once enabled."

"Educators cannot tell students what to think about media and teach them to think for themselves at the same time."

"as long as media continue to play a significant role in society, there will be a significant, universal need for media literacy education."

"if teachers want critical inquiry...to become students' "default mode," then they cannot selectively ask students to apply critical thinking skills only to some media forms while exempting others..."

"If - as we contend - media literacy is a logical extension of traditional literacy, and the definition of media encompasses books, then an educational strategy designed primarily around limiting media use doesn't make much sense.  Who would argue that we should keep students away from books!?"

 "what we're suggesting isn't a Snow White "mirror, mirror on the wall" scenario where educators need to declare a particular literacy as the "fairest of all."  Media literacy need not supplant work that teachers or librarians are currently doing; rather, it can enhance it."

"Like lookout posts in a well-built castle, media literacy questions should provide strategically placed windows from which to scan the culture in which we live, see its systems and structures, and respond accordingly."

"as educators we need to keep in mind that to achieve critical autonomy, students have to be free to come to conclusions that are not only independent of media influences but also independent of us."

"as literacy, media literacy education may have political consequences, but it is an educational discipline and not a political movement...It is not that we don't want to hold the people who make and regulate media accountable; it's just that we don't want to hold schools accountable for those who make or regulate media...media literacy education will fail in its central goals if it is designed with the explicit intention of reforming media."

"It isn't enough to ask students to look at the "what" without also asking them to consider the "So what?"  That's why media literacy education analysis does not stop with identification of production techniques."

"If we want students to use media with a sense of ethics, responsibility, and purpose, we have to teach them how."

"Inquiry-based media literacy education keeps front and center questions about the purpose of all of education:  to be an engaged citizen, a productive worker, and a lifelong learner - the very goals that sometimes get lost in the details of teaching medieval history, the rules of punctuation, and the table of elements or, worse, the bureaucratic record keeping and standardized testing that eat up so much time in so many schools."

With "evergreen" examples, this book will be valuable for anyone interested in how to help students become independent thinkers and skilled 21st century communicators.