Why did the authors do this study?
They wanted to study the
impact of media-literacy curriculum on students' attitudes, behavior,
knowledge, and academic performance. As
little to no research had been done on this.
How did the authors do the study?
They restructured the entire English
Curriculum at a high school to better prepare students. This was a group effort involving seven
teachers, several of whom had been teaching for many years. This change in curriculum was significant. There was a strong collaboration between the
teachers which involved carefully planning, and frequent communication.
It was noted that there needed to be
preparation of the students prior to the skill and the multi-year study allowed
students to grow and evolve002E
What data/results emerged from the
study?
The participating teachers in the 11th
grade course reached three hypothesis as follows:
H1. Media-literacy instruction does not increase students' comprehension skills, as operationalized by the ability to identify the main idea of messages and to recall specific details from three formats of nonfiction-print, audio, and video.
H2. Media-literacy instruction does not increase students' writing skills, as operationalized by assessments of writing quality and quantity, spelling, and usage errors.
H3. Media-literacy instruction does not increase message-analysis skills involving reading; listening; and viewing media messages in print, audio, and video forms. Analysis skills are operationalized as the following: the ability to identify a message's purpose and target audience, identification of techniques used to construct the message, identification of values and point of view, identification of information omitted from a message, and comparison-contrast between messages using similar formats.
What do the authors conclude from
the data analysis?
That the instruction of media
literacy had little to no impact upon the learning ability of the test
students.
What is the significance of the
study?
There are some that may say that the
education and teach of media literacy is insignificant and of little
consequence to the educational curve of todays youth. Since study results seem to show that media
literacy did little to impact the acquisition of knowledge of the test subjects
it may not be worth the expense to modify curriculum.
How do these findings influence your
position on media literacy and school curriculum?
I still believe that media literacy
is crucial for future skills development. This study is now more than 7 years old, and
as in all things time and education changes.
Skills of students have evolved from this earlier time. Just as the correct way to teach the three “Rs”
has evolved so too will the role of media literacy.
You highlighted some the findings that did not find significant differences between the control group and treatment group. To get a complete understanding of the study all findings must be taken into account.
ReplyDeleteThe study found significant improvement in the treatment group in abilities to understand and summarize information they received by reading, viewing, and listening. Student in the treatment group also wrote more than the control group which is a sign of improved writing skills. (spelling is not necessarily a sign of being a good writer).
Overall I think the study points to the legitimacy of using other texts besides print-based texts to improve students reading and writing abilities.