Media literacy prepares teachers for diversity.

Abstract

Today's teachers deal with diversity at every level. Many seem unprepared. Media literacy incorporated into teacher education and professional development may benefit teachers by helping them understand the "other;" by helping them challenge media notions about gender, race, class, etc.; by introducing them to alternative pedagogies; and by offering them resources and techniques to empower their own students.

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America's educators teach a more diverse group of students than ever before--varied nationalities, backgrounds, and abilities are represented at every level of public schooling today. Yet despite mandates to prepare teachers, as NCATE (the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education) requires, and despite occasional in-service workshops, multicultural education for teachers remains problematic. Many teacher candidates plan to return to their white suburbs or small towns, and see no reason for multicultural education, resisting the topic. Then, practicing teachers are often thrown into demanding, diverse classrooms without sufficient instruction, support, or resources. Media literacy is needed in teacher education for many reasons, but media literacy integrated into teacher education and development may specifically offer a means of improving teaching for diversity.

Teacher Education for Diversity

Numerous authorities declare that preparing teachers for diversity remains a problem. Ladson-Billings (2001), for example, maintains that "few teacher education programs prepare teachers to be effective in urban classrooms serving diverse groups of students" and "Similarly, work by feminist teacher educators underscores the problem that our traditional teacher education paradigms have in addressing diversity, equity, and social justice" (pp. 3 & 5). Manning and Baruth (2000) add that teachers "like others in U.S. society, have learned attitudes and behaviors that are ageist, disability biased, racist, sexist, and ethnocentric. Some biases are so deeply internalized that individuals do not realize they hold them" (p. 229). Cushner, McClelland, and Safford (2000) note that fewer than 10 percent of teacher education students in the United States claim fluency in a language other than English, most live within 100 miles of their birthplace, 69 percent report spending most or all of their time with people just like them, and a "substantial number of teacher education students do not believe that" poor and minority learners can learn high level concepts (p. 12). Finally, as Landsman (2001) points out, most white teachers are at best nervous and insecure even talking about such matters as race (p. xi). Teachers often lack the knowledge and resources to serve diverse students. Effective teacher education for diversity is not easy; media literacy may prove key.

Media Literacy and Multicultural Education

Media literacy is defined as the ability to access, analyze, evaluate and create communications in a variety of media (Aufderheide, 1993, p.2). American society is inundated by media images and sounds, from the TV always on in the restaurant to pop-ups on the Internet. Thus, Thoman (1999) summarizes that media literacy is "the ability to create personal meaning from the verbal and visual symbols we take in every day through television, radio, computers, newspapers and magazines, and, of course, advertising. It's the ability to choose and select, the ability to challenge and question, the ability to be conscious about what's going on around us--and not be passive and vulnerable" (p. 50). The media are not merely a window on reality; they construct versions of life which need to be understood and questioned.

Cortes (2000) states that "school education will always be self-limiting in its effectiveness if school educators do not seriously engage the reality--the inevitability--of students learning about 'otherness' through the media" (p. xvii). The media interpret so much of what all know and believe, teachers must deal with the media. Media literacy can help accomplish four goals of teacher education and development: promote understanding of diverse human beings; help teachers challenge their own notions, questioning mass media images; offer alternative pedagogies for multicultural education; and support teachers with techniques and resources that can empower their diverse students.

Understanding Others through Media

The media can covey the experiences, ideas, and human emotions of "others" to white, middle class teachers who may have had little personal connection to children of different religion, class, or ability. Methods courses or professional development sessions could be enriched by a number of popular movies, from the 1998 Smoke Signals (directed by Chris Eyre) about Native American adolescents (based on the stories of Sherman Alexie) to the 1992 School Ties (directed by Robert Mandel), a movie that explores anti-Semitism in an American prep school. Films can convey the humanity of others, helping teachers identify with the protagonists, supplying vicarious experience that entertains and informs.

Hammer and Kellner (2000) explore the power of multimedia technologies to strengthen multicultural education, "bringing the experiences of marginal and oppressed groups to the mainstream" through the Shoah Project (p. 475). The Shoah Project offers video documentaries, CD-Roms and web sites to communicate the Holocaust. Video interviews with Holocaust survivors who introduce their families and share news clippings, pictures, and journal readings are especially meaningful. Hammer and Kellner summarize as follows:

   To non-Jews, Jews are an Other; they exist in an area of
   strangeness, just as Blacks are alien to non-Blacks who
   have not interacted with them. Multimedia technology makes
   representations of those perceived as Other accessible.
   These images can personalize individuals; they make it
   possible to experience the views, practices, and culture
   of groups outside one's life. In particular, multimedia
   can dramatize oppression, making intolerance and bigotry
   vivid, showing the evil effects of racism and prejudice.
   (p. 13)

Challenging Media Messages and Assumptions

Teachers, both pre- and inservice, need to deconstruct images of women, minorities, and others on TV and in newspapers. A social foundations course or an adolescent psychology course for future teachers would be a good place to start. For example, teachers need to know about self-image and health hazards like anorexia which many think are exacerbated by images of women in the media. Current teachers, too, could view and discuss Sut Jhally's Dreamworlds II (1995) from the Media Education Foundation, a video which examines the portrayal of women on MTV, reducing females to young, perfect, and eager sexual objects. After discussing what these images mean to adolescent girls in particular, teachers can consider ways females are treated in the classroom and school culture and what this means.

Likewise, teachers can challenge portrayals of young Black men or the many stereotypes the media communicate about others. Multiculturalism demands critical attention to one's own assumptions. For instance, a video from the Films for the Humanities and Sciences, Color-Blind: Fighting Racism in the Schools (1999), presents five real students speaking about racial harassment at their high school. Overt prejudice and racism along with bullying are problems in schools; teachers need to work to solve such problems. As Cortes (2000) argues, "It does little good to recognize the mass media's multicultural teaching power, particularly regarding the media treatment of different social and cultural groups, if educators do not also draw upon that recognition to inform and transform their own teaching" (p. xvii).

Alternative Pedagogies for a Diverse Society

In contrast to skill and drill, test- or standard-driven teaching methods still common in schools, other teaching approaches are available, more attuned to diversity in schools. Teachers need to understand alternative pedagogies. For example, one pedagogical theory variously referred to as critical media literacy, critical pedagogy, or radical media education connects media literacy and social issues related to diversity. The umbrella notion of critical literacy is described by Herbeck and Beier (2003) as follows:

   Critical literacy empowers students to think, to question, and
   to act. Instead of just complaining about how things are, students
   learn that they are capable of changing their world ... Teachers
   need to encourage students to think about events from a social
   justice perspective by continually asking the hard questions: Why
   is it like this? Whose voice is not heard? Who is benefiting from
   this situation? What else do we need to know? What can we do?
   (p. 42)

Similarly, Jenkins (1997) describes critical media literacy as follows:

   Radical media education should start by mobilizing what students
   already know about and through the media, helping them refine
   their interpretive skills and challenging them to think through
   the race, gender, and class implications of conventional
   narratives ... This does not mean we are required to remain
   silent bout the misogyny, racism, class bias, homophobia, and
   other ideologies which run through contemporary children's
   culture. Quite the contrary, we should help our children to
   recognize the incompleteness of commercial representations and
   to fill those gaps with their own creative output. We should
   train students to talk back to the media ... (p. 32)

As Semali (2000) says, "Critical media literacy encourages students to challenge the authority of readings and texts, and challenge the opinions of all educators, including the new educator of choice, television" (p. 21).

Examples of critical media literacy in action include Yosso's (2002) use of a media literacy curriculum that challenged perceptions of Chicanas/os through the mass media in a California community college and Morrell's (2002) work with urban teens in the San Francisco Bay area, using hip-hop, TV, and movies. The authors argue that critical pedagogy aids in raising consciousness, enables efforts towards social justice, and also helps students develop traditional academic capabilities. Yosso maintains that "critical media literacy should be incorporated into training programs for teachers, social workers, police officers, and health care professionals" (p. 59). If Americans want students who will be able not only to manage change in the Information Age but also create a better society, then alternative pedagogies must be available to teachers. Such pedagogies will confront young people with deep questions about their media-dominated lives, questions such as who is producing media messages and why, how are diverse people represented in the media, and where information and ideas not promulgated by the mass media can be found.

Supporting Diversity in the Classroom

Finally, media literacy in teacher education offers teachers media literacy techniques and materials to support diversity in their own classrooms. In particular, the ability to create media can be empowering for students. As they learn to use Powerpoint or video production, students can become sophisticated, critical users of media and can value their own origins. Media creation fits across the current teacher education curriculum, from child development to student teaching. In media literacy workshops, veteran teachers can learn skills to enliven their teaching for all students. When all students can do research, weigh ideas, and express themselves through multimedia, the teacher can honor diverse cultures and learning styles. Considine and Haley (1992) note as follows:

   But, if the media shape stereotypes, they can also be used to
   challenge and change those stereotypes. New technologies afford
   minorities in our society the opportunity to tell their own
   story through their own words and pictures, rather than being
   filtered through the textbooks and media of the predominant
   culture. In Deer River, Minnesota, for example, students such as
   Michael Fairbanks and a group of Christa McAuliffe Fellows are
   utilizing interactive video to preserve Ojibwa customs and
   culture. (p.xi)

Teachers can help their students share projects with others through the Internet or create video documentaries on their own communities and own problems such as adolescent crime. Students can then engage one another on issues of diversity, too. The ability of media creation to further the goals of multicultural teaching is summed up by Tyner (1998):

   Specifically, media production gives voice to students who are
   otherwise silenced in their schools and communities. It allows
   students to represent their experiences and their communities
   as cultural insiders, instead of the incessant representation and
   misrepresentation of them by media producers outside their
   communities. It allows them to see the ethical dilemmas presented
   by representation and media from a much broader perspective than
   simple watching, criticism, and evaluation can provide. (p. 185)

In addition, media literate teachers will become familiar with a great range of materials and resources from which they can draw to create curriculum which values diversity. For instance, books, articles, videos, and teaching resources are available from the Center for Media Literacy which can be contacted on-line at www.medialit.org. Resources include Break the Ties that Bind: Sexism in the Media, a pamphlet offering six lessons and eight handouts to help students study how the media influence images of masculinity and femininity, and a video, Reviving Ophelia, with an interview of Mary Pipher, suitable for high school students or parents. A number of websites are available for teachers such as the umbrella site at the University of Oregon at http://interact.uoregon.edu/MediaLit/HomePage.

Doing Media Literacy in Teacher Education

Research on the implementation of media literacy in teacher education for pre- or in-service teachers remains rare. Only a few American universities have instituted programs, one being Appalachian State University in North Carolina which offers a graduate program in media literacy from the College of Education. Media literacy has been researched in teacher education in other countries (e.g. Luke, 2000), and the need for media literacy in teacher education has been argued by a number of American scholars (e.g. Tyner, 1992, and Semali, 2000). This author's experience remains anecdotal but suggestive.

Mere access to diverse media can prove a potent teaching tool. For example, in a graduate teaching course, 1 show the video How Difficult Can this Be? The F.A.T. City Workshop (1996) from PBS. This video portrays a workshop presented by Richard D. Lavoie, a nationally known expert on learning disabilities. Lavoie arranges tasks so that the audience experiences what it is like to be learning disabled in the classroom. Including a large amount of information on the nature and causes of learning disabilities, this video communicates in a visceral way the needs of learning disabled students. Recently, one graduate student in my class borrowed the video to share in an in-service session at his own school. Even at the lowest level of media literacy, media can prove powerful in helping teachers prepare for diverse students. Perhaps the most effective introduction of media literacy came in a doctoral seminar in the spring of 2003. In the course entitled Language, Literacy, and Culture, students read and discussed Tyner's Literacy in a Digital Age and studied several videos focusing on stories of gender, class, and race. Assignments required analysis and evaluation of media. Several course evaluations indicate that these in-service educators came to see media literacy as part of multicultural education. One commented on the connection between culture and media, and another commented that "media literacy [is] a strategy to promote/foster diversity." Such anecdotes hardly constitute definitive evidence, but they do point to the potential of media literacy. Clearly, much research remains to be done.

Conclusion

Preparing teachers for the diversity of the 21st Century remains a challenge. Media literacy as a component of teacher education and professional development may prove useful. Media literacy, thinking critically about and with the media, can help teachers understand diverse people, reflect on their own ideas about others, can introduce alternative pedagogies for diversity, and can familiarize teachers with strategies and resources for supporting multiculturalism. Jenkins (1997) captures the potential of media literacy:

   Media education needs to be taught as part of what it means to
   write and communicate in the modern era; as a basic citizenship
   skill ... and as a fundamental aspect of race, gender, sexuality,
   and class studies. Such teaching should encourage students to think
   independently and critically about the pleasures and politics of
   media consumption, to reflect on what stories get told and what
   stories don't get told through commercial entertainment, and to
   begin to imagine bow these media materials can be used in a
   more principled and democratic fashion. (p. 34)

References

Aufderheide, P. (1993). Media literacy: A report of the National Leadership Conference on Media Literacy. Washington, D. C.: The Aspen Institute. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED365294)

Considine, D., & Haley, G. (1992). Visual messages: Integrating imagery into instruction. Englewood, CO: Teachers Ideas Press.

Cortes, C. (2000). The children are watching: How the media teach about diversity. New York: Teachers College.

Cushner, K., McClellend, A., & Safford, P. (2000). Human diversity in education. (3rd ed.). Boston: McGraw Hill.

Hammer, R., & Kellner, D. (2000). Multimedia pedagogy and multicultural education for the new millennium. Religious Education, 95, 475-490.

Herbeck, J., & Beier, C. (2003). A critical literacy curriculum: Helping preservice teachers to understand reading and writing as emancipatory acts. Thinking Classroom, 4 (4), 37-42.

Jenkins, H. (1997). Empowering children in the digital age: Towards a radical media pedagogy. Radical Teacher, 50, 30-35.

Ladson-Billings, G. (2001). Crossing over to Canaan. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Landsman, J. (2001). A white teacher talks about race. Lanham, Maryland: The Scarecrow Press.

Luke, C. (2000). New literacies in teacher education. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 43, 424-435.

Manning, M., & Baruth, L. (2000). Multicultural education of children and adolescents. (3rd ed). Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Morrell, E. (2002). Toward a critical pedagogy of popular culture: Literacy development among urban youth. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 46 (1), 72-77.

Semali, L. M. (2000). Literacy in multimedia America: Integrating media education across the curriculum. New York: Falmer Press.

Thoman, E. (1999). Skills and strategies for media education. Educational Leadership, 56 (5), 50-54.

Tyner, K. (1992). The tale of the elephant: Media education in the United States. In C. Bazalgette, E. Bevort, & J. Savion (Eds.), New directions: media education worldwide (pp. 170-176). London: British Film Institute.

Tyner, K. (1998). Literacy in a digital age. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Yosso, T. J. (2002). Critical race: Challenging deficit discourse about Chicanas/os. Journal of Popular Film & Television, 30 (1), 52-62.

Gretchen Schwarz, Oklahoma State University

Schwarz is a Professor of Curriculum Studies in the School of Teaching and Curriculum Leadership.