Finding the Middle in the Curriculum Versus New Literacies Wars

As I begin to make decisions about a framework for the data I’m collecting for my dissertation, I continually question how traditional literacy instruction can meet the world of new literacies. The answer circles back, over and over, to Freire’s (1992) critical pedagogy, in which teachers and students are co-learners. Thus, through critical literacy, students’ and I together recontextualize literacy processes through translation of symbols, analysis of social constructs, and negotiation of meaning.

When my senior classes read Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1997), they also sort through intertextual layers and connections: Chinua Achebe’s essay, An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1977); the film, Apocalypse Now (Coppola, 1979); documentary footage of the Vietnam War; articles from the progressive community website, CommonDreams.org on US colonialism; and a Google search using the text keywords to analyze the effect of Conrad’s text on modern American society.

After sifting through a variety of peer-reviewed research sources, students decide which frames of knowing, observing, and interpreting they will incorporate into their final projects. “Frames are powerful not only because we have internalized them from media, but because they have become second nature to us --- they allow us to process information efficiently and get about our lives” (Gilliam, Aubrun, Grady, & Bostrom, 2002, p. 4). The frame is a portrait of trends rather than a particular individual’s identity. The concept of frame is constant as I incorporate a critical literacy framework into the classroom.

Due to the efficacious means of producing, circulating, and exchanging information, popular and media cultures are central ways in which my students can learn about themselves, their relationship to others, and the world beyond their homes (Giroux, H., 1999). I seek to create critical readers who can identify ways that body, power, and gender messages contribute to discourse (Gee, 2003). I want students to “read” their worlds in new and increasingly reflective ways, to add a metacognitive layer to learning, to adopt an outsider perspective in order to become analytical; and to interrogate the media as major political, pedagogical, and social forces (Giroux, H., 1999; Giroux, H. & Simon, 1989).

If my students own these strategies, then my influence will have transcended one school year. I teach students to question textual authority and use reasoning to come to autonomous decisions. Rather than trying to superimpose a particular world view on my students, I attempt to help them to achieve critical distance as they read their worlds in order to make independent and informed decisions as to whether to support or refute messages about identity within economic, social, political, historical, and aesthetic contexts.

For example, a senior honors female related a narrative to me about her maternal influences. “My mother refused to wear a veil on her wedding day,” Kelly Leigh began, “because her mother did, too. My grandmother said it was a sign of being submissive to her husband. She wasn’t having any of that.” A huge smile burst onto her face. “I’ve decided to wear one, anyway.”

Kelly Leigh had constructed “meaning through the integration of existing and new knowledge and the flexible use of strategies to foster, monitor, regulate, and maintain comprehension” (Dole, Duffy, Roehler, & Pearson, 1991). Through a critical literacy classroom, she was able to express and reconcile hegemonic gender messages. She made her own decision in light of evidence and after reflection.

Students like Kelly Leigh who become critically literate will question hegemony in its various forms and have the wherewithal to choose to accept or reject the mythology of the American Dream. It is a critical means to reconcile curriculum and embedded messages of cultural transmission.

Resources
Achebe. (1977). An image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Massachusetts Review, 18, 782-794.
Conrad. (1997). Heart of darkness: Signet Classics.
Coppola (Writer) (1979). Apocalypse now. In Z. Studios (Producer). United States: Paramount.
Dole, Duffy, Roehler, & Pearson. (1991). Moving from the old to the new: Research on reading comprehension instruction. Review of Educational Research, 61(2), 239-264.
Freire. (1992). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: The Continuum Publishing Company.
Gee. (2003). What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
Gilliam, Aubrun, Grady, & Bostrom. (2002). Framing public issues. Washington, D.C.
: Frameworks Institute.
Giroux. (1999). The mouse that roared: Disney and the end of innocence. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
Giroux, & Simon. (1989). Popular culture as a pedagogy of pleasure and meaning. In H. Giroux & R. Simon (Eds.), Popular culture: Schooling and everyday life. New York: Bergin & Garvey Publishers, Inc.

Media Literacy Teen Council

Shifting the Landscape of Literacy at High School

I’ve been thinking lately about what media literacy in school must look like through the eyes of teens. I’ve decided that, with the exception of segregated units in Health classes, the primary function of media texts in education is as rainy day fillers [the movie version of Chapter 22 of Wuthering Heights” (Wyler, 1939)] or vehicles for substitute teacher lesson plans [Grammar Rock (Warburton, 1995)]. Media literacy is not viewed as essential to literacy instruction.

Media systems provide the majority of texts through which students view themselves. Modern communications media include television, cinema, video, radio, photography, advertising, newspapers, magazines, recorded music, video games, and the Internet. “Children have gained power, not merely as citizens but also as consumers; and indeed the two may have become impossible to separate,” argues Buckingham (2003). Yet most public school classrooms do not interrogate media texts, even though all fifty American states incorporate media standards into frameworks.

How might media literacy evolve in schools across the United States? Maybe it needs to come from the teens themselves. All too often, teachers experience discomfort when called upon to use new technologies, which go hand-in-hand with new literacies. Maybe the teens could teach the teachers.

I’ve decided to propose a Media Literacy Teen Council (MLTC) at my high school for the 2008-2009 school year. If accepted, the project will invite youth interns to learn media production, media literacy education, peer teaching, and entrepreneurial skills during the first term and then share their learning during the remainder of the 08/09 year with other students, faculty, and governmental institutions.

The MLTC project will enrich the curriculum through student exposure to tools to analyze messages in media texts and to understand how structural features -- such as media ownership --- mythologize the world. Students will be encouraged to solve as well as to pose problems. Freire (1992) refers to “critical and liberating dialogue, which presupposes action” (p. 52) as essential to engaged learning, so the MLTC will respond in authentic ways when engaged in inquiry. The MLTC will become skillful creators and producers of media messages to facilitate understanding as to the strengths and limitations of each medium.

“There’s always something decentred about the medium of culture, about language, textuality, and signification, which always escapes and evades the attempt to link it, directly and immediately, with other structures,” argues Hall (2003). By transforming media consumption into an active process, the MLTC will gain critical distance from the pervasive texts of their lives in order to acknowledge reasons for enjoyment, potential for persuasion through symbolic representations, and media’s ability to re-create the world in fictional and non-fictional ways.

The MLTC will offer guidance to students and teachers about ways that media in the classroom make space for conversations as a means to build relationships, negotiate learning and teaching, and analyze processes and strategies.

Project Description: Who will participate? Students will learn of the project during a publicity drive in June 2007. Each of the 100+ staff persons will be asked to nominate two students. Of particular interest will be students who may not achieve academic distinctions but who may have keen interest in media texts and who could benefit from belongingness that will emerge from participation in the project. The MLTC can be a place for students to have voices.


While 20-30 students will participate on the MLTC, the larger impact is on the students and staff members who will be invited to attend workshops, improvisations, simulations, and seminars led by the MLTC after initial leadership training.


What will the teachers and students do? The following are sample activities:

Leadership Essentials. Come to this workshop to explore essential skills of leadership: really listening to others and finding effective ways to talk with peers to get things done. Learn aspects of civics responsibility; outreach techniques through phone calls, mailings, presentations and public speaking; work with other school leadership groups and committees See how a teen council model could work for you.

Acting Out Against Big Media. What is the impact of advertising? How does it influence us? In this workshop we will find answers through exciting theater improvisation games. Be prepared for an extremely interactive workshop, seeking to educate, empower and inspire people to become leaders for positive change!
Spam. Spam. Spam. Do you feel like you live in a spam culture? Learn how teens can oppose corporate efforts to dangle an ad in front of our eyes at every moment. Corporations claim the right to pester us with marketing, telemarketing, spam, ad creep, etc. Fight for the right to be let alone.

"That's so Gay." Come talk about how to make your school a safer place for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer & questioning students, staff, and families. Analyze media representations of heterosexuality and homosexuality. This workshop breaks down the myths & stereotypes of LGBTQQ people & really gets at the root of what homophobia is & what we can ALL do about it. Be prepared to move around, participate and believe it or not, laugh.

Drumming toward Teamwork through Music. Come hear what it takes to make music from western and other cultures with 20 strangers. Definitely a hands-on workshop! Conducted in cooperation with the Music Department.

Media "News" on the War in Iraq. How does the media convey the news of the war in Iraq? Whose voices are heard and whose are silenced? We will screen a short film about independent media in time of war and discuss this important topic.

Anti-Racism & Institutional Oppression. Defining institutional racism, sharing your own heritage, understanding white privilege, describing lateral oppression as bullying and finding ways to take action are the core of this workshop. Interrogate media texts for hidden signification. Interactive exercises help us focus on topics that can often be hard to talk about.

Food Activism. When eating lunch, you are absorbing more than just the food on your plate. Your consumption is related to the foods and beverages you see depicted on screens. Come learn how students can make their cafeteria dining experience more sustainable.

What's Gender Got to Do With it? Ever wonder why girls wear pink & boys wear blue? This workshop focuses on exactly WHAT gender is & more importantly, what YOU can do with it, about it & to it. Be prepared to cross the gender line, more than once in fun, interactive activities that get you up and moving around!

Alcohol Laws 101. What are images of alcohol in excess like in media texts? What really happens when the cops bust up a party? This workshop will highlight the laws around alcohol, tobacco and other drugs, but more importantly, will explain in an honest and straightforward fashion what really can (and does) happen in our community.


Community Assessment and Evaluation. Be part of a Youth Survey. Learn how to construct and use surveys to find out where teens hang out on media. It's like a big scavenger hunt. Afterward, come back and do presentations on you’ve they've found as a way to inform faculty about possibilities for inclusion in the curriculum.


Politics. Travel to the state capital to advocate for enhanced media literacy in our state’s public schools. Send the message that there's a great constituency in youth and that politicians should represent them. Show them that media is an important part of literacy instruction.

What are the expected learning outcomes? Outcomes in the realm of worldview --- cognition and affect--- are likely to occur. If participation in media literacy curricula allows individuals to learn something new or something more about media messages, practices, processes, institutions, or influence, then important cognitive development will have occurred. Outcomes point to increased knowledge of key concepts or terms used in the study of media and increased awareness of media persuasion, conventions, and ubiquity.

Some examples might include knowledge of strategies used in advertising to encourage favorable responses; awareness of the ways that violence is shown in the media that make it look cool; media strategies that glamorize risk-taking behaviors; or attention to roles that women, people of color, and other underrepresented groups are given in the media. Participation might contribute to a student's approval of some media messages, practices, processes, institutions, or influence and the disapproval of others.

Overall, if a student develops the ability to deconstruct, or break down components of and closely analyze media messages, then media literacy has been effective and student are becoming critical thinkers about the media.

How will they be assessed? Outcomes will be assessed in formative and summative ways: reactions to individual workshops as well as products created by the Council members. After the project is completed, a qualitative data analysis will be completed. Results will be written and submitted to an educational journal for consideration for publication.

Conclusion What are your ideas about the ways media literacy, or a teen council, or a public school could enhance teens’ deconstruction of the pervasive media texts of their lives?


Resources

Buckingham, D. (2003). Media education: Literacy, learning, and contemporary culture. Malden, MA: Polity.

Freire, P. (1992). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: The Continuum Publishing Company.

Green Mountain Peer Project, 180 Flynn Avenue, Greenhouse Bldg. 4&5, Burlington, VT. 05401,
http://gmppvt.org/print.php?name=workshops&ID=

Hall, S. (2003). Encoding and decoding. In S. During (Ed.), The cultural studies reader (pp. 507-517). New York: Routledge.


Warburton, T. (Writer) (1995). Grammar Rock, Schoolhouse Rock. United States: ABC/ Disney.


Wyler, W. (Writer) (1939). Wuthering heights. US: Samuel Goldwin Company.