This document discusses using critical media literacy in K-12 lessons. It provides definitions of critical media literacy as analyzing media codes, conventions, and messages to uncover stereotypes. Critical media literacy helps students understand representations that construct understanding of the world and how practices are grounded in culture, values, and privilege. The document presents examples of using art and quotes to frame discussions and have students consider implications beyond the classroom.

1. USING CRITICAL MEDIA
LITERACY IN ANY K-12
LESSON
KURT LOVE, PH.D.
CENTRAL CONNECTICUT STATE UNIVERSITY
NORTHEAST MEDIA LITERACY CONFERENCE, UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT, 2012

2. CRITICAL MEDIA LITERACY
“There is expanding recognition that media representations help construct our
images and understanding of the world and that education must meet the dual
challenges of teaching media literacy in a multicultural society and sensitising
students and the public to the inequities and injustices of a society based on
gender, race, and class inequalities and discrimination.” (Kellner & Share, 2005,
p. 370)

3. CRITICAL MEDIA LITERACY
Critical media literacy includes use of standpoint theory, use of voice,
deconstruction (Kellner & Share, 2005)
“Critical media literacy involves cultivating skills in analysing media codes and
conventions, abilities to criticize stereotypes, dominant values, and ideologies,
and competencies to interpret the multiple meanings and messages generated
by media texts. Media literacy helps people to use media intelligently, to
discriminate and evaluate media content, to critically dissect media forms, to
investigate media effects and uses, and to construct alternative media.” (Kellner
& Share, 2005, p. 372)

4. CRITICAL MEDIA LITERACY
IN OTHER WORDS...
Critical media literacy helps us to uncover stereotypes and discrimination of
race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, age, religion, and...
Critical media literacy helps us to understand more deeply how our practices
are grounded in culture, values, privilege, and...
Critical media literacy acts as a “portal” into understanding our own
communities’ practices of marginalization, oppression, omission, and
domination

5. “Rickshaw”
Banksy

6. “Rickshaw”
Banksy
Modern Day
Globalization Racism Classism
Slavery
“Othering” Modernity
First World & Colonization
“Third World”
Tourism &
Business
Exploitation
Mindsets
Relationships with Global Consumerism

7. Art as a “Portal”
At the very least, participatory
involvement with the many forms of art
can enable us to see more in our
experience, to hear more on normally
unheard frequencies, to become conscious
of what daily routines have obscured,
what habit and convention have
suppressed. (Greene, 1995, p. 123)

8. 3 Types of Curricula
• Mainstream Curriculum - Curriculum that is
explicit
• Hidden Curriculum - Messages that are present
but hidden (i.e. forms of oppression and
privilege)
• Null Curriculum - Messages that are silenced,
omitted, or marginalized.

9. What is
Transformative Learning?
Learning is a process
of changing one’s
relationships with
her/his community,
which consist of
interconnections with
nature and society.

10. ZOE WEIL & “SOLUTIONARIES”
THE CAN BE A MORE SUSTAINABLE AND JUST PLACE IF
SCHOOLS WERE TO BE TWEAKED SLIGHTLY
USE ISSUES OF SUSTAINABILITY, ECOJUSTICE, AND
SOCIAL JUSTICE AS THE CONTEXT FOR LEARNING
THE PRIMARY GOAL OF THIS KIND OF EDUCATION IS TO
MAKE STUDENTS “SOLUTIONARIES” WHO ARE ABLE
TO LOOK AT THEIR LIVES, THEIR PRACTICES, AND HOW
THEY CAN UNDERSTAND AND BE ABLE TO MAKE
CHOICES THAT BETTER IMPACT COMMUNITY
(SOCIALLY, CULTURALLY, AND ECOLOGICALLY)

11. Thinking
Convergent Thinking -
All paths lead to a single destination. This is rooted in a
belief that there is only one “Truth.”
Traditional Liberal/Progressive
scaf
Truth Thought fold
New
Truth
d Thought
scaffol
Thought Thought

12. Thinking
Divergent Thinking -
Explore many paths in authentic settings with questions
that have no predetermined answer.
Transformative
New New
Thought Thought Relationship
Critical Communities
Info Questioning
New New
Thought Thought Relationship

13. Transformative Unit Plans
Unit starts with connections to a contemporary, “real
world” issues. Use art, articles, videos, life experiences, etc.
(Lessons 1-2)
Those contemporary issues are threaded throughout
the rest of the unit in as many lessons as makes sense.
Skills and concepts (Lessons 2-6)
Community Involvement #1 - Communicating with
community members (Lessons 3-8)
Community Involvement #2 - Action in the community
with the newly acquired knowledge (Lessons 8-10)

14. Unit Plan
Lessons 1-2: Lessons 2-6:
Raise Lessons 2-6: Lessons 2-6:
Engage critical Lessons 3-8: Lessons 8-10:
questions Work with Critically
questions with Community 1 Community 2
about real skills and question skills
skills in the
world concepts and concepts
community
New New
Thought Thought Relationship
Critical Communities
Info Questioning
New New
Thought Thought Relationship

15. “THICK DESCRIPTION”
Superficial
Mainstream These two
Message might set up a
Null binary
Message
These two
Relationships generally show a
complexity not
Tensions binary “packaged”
Deep info

16. Basic Lesson Plan
Initiation - CML to introduce/explore
Body - CML to go deeper with the
curriculum
Closure - CML as interpretation and
implications
Assessment - CML as data

17. Response
To
Intervention
CML as
targeted
intervention

18. “Initiation” or
Framing the Discourse
Raise questions:
Rev their engines with interesting,
relevant, real-world connections
Set up the frame of thinking and
analysis that will then be used for the
rest of the lesson.

19. “Initiation” or
Framing the Discourse

27. A “RETURN TO FEMININITY”
'Cause I'm just a girl
Take this pink ribbon off my eyes
I'd rather not be
I'm exposed
'Cause they won't let me drive
And it's no big surprise
Late at night I'm just a girl,
Don't you think I I'm just a girl, what's my destiny?
know
Guess I'm some kind of freak
Exactly where I stand I've succumbed to
What
'Cause they all sit and stare
This world is forcing me me numb
Is making
With their eyes
To hold your hand just a girl, my apologies
I'm
'Cause I'm just a girl, little 'ol me is so burdensome
What I've become
I'm just a girl, a girl,
Don't let me out of your sight lucky me
I'm just
Take a good look at me
I'm just a girl, all Twiddle-dum there's no comparison
pretty and petite
Just your typical prototype
So don't let me have any rights
Oh...I've had it up to!
Oh...I've had it up to here!
Oh...I've had it upOh...I've had it up to!!
to here!
Oh...am I making myself clear?
The moment that Oh...I've had it up to here!
I step outside
I'm just a girl
So many reasons
I'm just a girl in the world...
For me to run and hide
That's all that you'll let me be!
I can't do the little things I hold so dear
I'm just a girl, living in captivity
'Cause it's all those little things
Your rule of thumb
That I fear
Makes me worry some
“Just a Girl”

28. A “RETURN TO FEMININITY”
The demand that women “return to femininity” is a demand that the cultural
gears shift into reverse, that we back up to a fabled time when everyone was
richer, younger, more powerful. The “feminine” woman is forever static and
childlike. She is like the ballerina in an old-fashioned music box, her unchanging
features tiny and girlish, her voice tinkly, her body stuck on a pin, rotating in a
spiral that will never grow.
From Backlash by Susan Faludi (p. 70, 1991)

29. “Women of the future
will make the Moon a
cleaner place to live.”

30. “Want him to be more of
a man?
Try being more of a
woman.”

32. “Initiation” or
Framing the Discourse
Great place to analyze ART & MUSIC
Great place to analyze YouTube videos
Great place to analyze Advertisements
Great place to analyze Documentary
Film Excerpts
Great place to analyze Quotes

33. “Closure” or
Going Beyond Exit Slips
An important opportunity to check in with the
students to see where their thinking is.
This is information that will help you plan,
adjust, and modify for the next class meeting.
Researchers focus on implications rather than
on rote memorization. Ask “What does this
mean for us as a people?“ rather than “What
does this mean?”

34. “Closure”
Implications

35. “Closure”
Implications

36. “Closure” or
Going Beyond Exit Slips
Great place to analyze ART & MUSIC
Great place to analyze YouTube videos
Great place to analyze Advertisements
Great place to analyze Documentary
Film Excerpts
Great place to analyze Quotes

37. References
Faludi, S. (1992). Backlash: The undeclared war against American
women. New York, NY: Anchor.
Greene, M. (1995). Releasing the imagination. San Francisco: Jossey-
Bass
Kellner, D., & Share, J. (2005). Toward critical media literacy: Core
concepts, debates, organizations, and policy. Discourse: Studies in cultural
politics of education, 26(3), 369-386.