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Behavioral Scientist

A Review of School-Based Initiatives in Media Literacy Education

Renee Hobbs
American Behavioral Scientist 2004 48: 42
DOI: 10.1177/0002764204267250

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Section 2: Media Literacy for K-12

A Review of School-Based Initiatives

in Media Literacy Education

RENEE HOBBS
Temple University

When teachers use videos, films, Web sites, popular music, newspapers, and magazines in the
K-12 classroom or when they involve students in creating media productions using video
cameras or computers, they may aim to motivate students’interest in the subject, build com-
munication and critical-thinking skills, encourage political activism, or promote personal
and social development. This article reviews teachers’ motivations for implementing media
literacy in K-12 education, focusing on current efforts in elementary education, secondary
English language arts, and media production. An overview of statewide media literacy initia-
tives in Texas, Maryland, and New Mexico is provided, and the author examines some public
anxieties concerning the uses of popular media in K-12 classrooms and makes recommenda-
tions for future research.

Keywords: media literacy; media education; video; curriculum; instruction; media

production

This past summer, I found myself sharing a cab with a teacher from Wisconsin
who, like me, was headed to the airport after attending the National Media Edu-
cation Conference in Baltimore, Maryland, an event sponsored by the Alliance
for a Media Literate America. What did she think of the conference? I asked. She
explained that she had come because as a high school video production teacher,
she was looking for ways to improve her curriculum to better reach the 90 plus
students who were enrolled in her course each semester, which was offered as
part of the school’s vocational education program. “I got much more than I bar-
gained for,” she explained, noting that she did not realize the breadth and diver-
sity of media literacy educators. “I never thought I’d meet so many health teach-
ers, and I never knew that there were so many nonprofit youth groups doing
media production in after-school programs.” She explained that although she
enjoyed the chance to attend workshops and seminars with other high school
video production teachers to learn specific strategies to use in her classroom, she
AMERICAN BEHAVIORAL SCIENTIST, Vol. 48 No. 1, September 2004 42-59
DOI: 10.1177/0002764204267250
© 2004 Sage Publications

42

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 Hobbs / SCHOOL-BASED INITIATIVES 43

was really excited by the opportunity to learn new things about topics that had
not been on her radar screen before. For instance, she discovered that religious
educators from many denominations use media literacy techniques to create
opportunities for meaningful discussions about relationships, faith, and values.
She was surprised to discover that so many English teachers not only analyze
films based on literature but also include the formal study of advertising, news,
and media violence. Social studies teachers introduced her to the ways of build-
ing critical-thinking and citizenship skills using newspapers and television
news; librarians demonstrated how to critically analyze Internet Web sites and
see the “biases” of various search engines. Media activists talked about strate-
gies for communicating with the Federal Communications Commission and the
problem of ownership concentration in the media. Was there anything about the
conference that she did not like? “It was a little overwhelming,” she admitted.
“But I now see that I need to find partners in my school and community to build
something beyond just my own classroom.”

* * * * *

Educators have diverse and conflicting perspectives about the mass media.
Most have a love-hate relationship with the mass media that is complex and mul-
tidimensional, which shapes their instructional practices in the classroom.
Because of this diversity, different approaches to media literacy are emerging
simultaneously in the 15,000 school districts in the United States as educators
begin introducing students to instructional practices of media analysis and
media production. Media literacy education has risen in visibility in K-12
schools throughout the 1990s, and although still proportionately small, a grow-
ing number of school-based programs are in place at the elementary, middle,
and high school levels. Defined generally as “the ability to access, analyze, eval-
uate and communicate messages in a wide variety of forms” (Aufderheide &
Firestone, 1993, p. 7), media literacy emphasizes both analyzing media and cre-
ating media (Buckingham, 2003). Drawing on the rich tradition under way in the
United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia for the past 15 years (see Alvarado &
Boyd-Barrett, 1992, for review), there has been substantial progress in the
United States as educators have developed key concepts and principles that
unify the field (Center for Media Literacy, 2004a), have formed two national
organizations, and have held conferences (Action Coalition for Media Educa-
tion, 2004; Alliance for a Media Literate America, 2004).
Although it is difficult to generalize about the diverse practitioners of media
literacy among K-12 teachers, two general patterns are evident. One pattern
emerges from those teachers who seek to develop students’ creativity and
authentic self-expression; the other is found among teachers who are exploring
economic, political, cultural, and social media issues in contemporary society.
Many teachers “discover” media literacy as an instructional tool simply from

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44 AMERICAN BEHAVIORAL SCIENTIST

trying to motivate students’ attention and interest in learning, without any

awareness that a body of 25 years of scholarship and theory exists on the subject.
They start by using newspaper articles, film, or video clips to capture student
attention and gradually begin to incorporate discussion, analysis, writing, or
media production activities to promote critical inquiry (Flood, Lapp, & Bayles-
Martin, 2000). When they meet others using similar approaches and learn about
the “key concepts” of media literacy, they get their first exposure to the emerging
literature and scholarship in the field. These teachers are motivated by the
opportunity that media literacy offers them to help transform the culture of the
classroom and the school into a place where students’ voices are valued and
respected, where classroom learning is linked to students’ lived experience, and
where students can develop the confidence to express themselves in a wide
variety of forms using language, imagery, and multimedia technology.
Other teachers begin with a sense of frustration or anger about some negative
or problematic aspect of contemporary media culture, usually media violence,
advertising and materialism, race or gender stereotyping, or concentration of
media ownership. These teachers learn all they can about the topic and bring this
information to their students. When they gradually discover that standing on a
soapbox, lecturing, encouraging students to share their anger, does little to pro-
mote students’ critical thinking, they may look for instructional tools and lesson
plans on these important topics that create learning environments where stu-
dents can learn about the media and express their views and ideas about the eco-
nomic, political, social, and cultural aspects of media’s role in society. As teach-
ers move from “sage on the stage” to “guide on the side,” they help students to
(a) reflect on their own beliefs and attitudes about the mass media in society, (b)
gather information on the topic from different points of view, (c) subject the evi-
dence to critical inquiry, and (d) create messages for authentic audiences using a
wide range of media production tools. Some (but not all) of these teachers are
committed political activists, dedicating themselves to important work that
helps to change the systems of media power that they find oppressive. But
instead of adopting an essentially persuasive effort to convince students of a par-
ticular belief system about media, these teachers emphasize the values of critical
inquiry and student autonomy. They aim to provide learning experiences where
students strengthen critical-thinking skills to reach their own understandings
about how to fully participate as citizens and consumers in a media-saturated
society.
Largely through the efforts of teachers like these, media literacy education
has entered the K-12 world through many portals, including English language
arts, social studies, fine arts, library-skills and educational technology, voca-
tional education, and health education. Some schools emphasize primarily the
study of media issues or the critical analysis of media messages, whereas other
schools primarily provide students with opportunities for media production.

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 Hobbs / SCHOOL-BASED INITIATIVES 45

Like the parable of the blind men and the elephant, it is clear that different educa-
tors perceive parts of the media literacy elephant without necessarily grasping
the whole of it (Tyner, 1991). This diversity of practices has led to some “great
debates,” questions that may divide media literacy practitioners into distinct
groups or camps, reflecting both the intellectual backgrounds and experiences
of various practitioners as well as philosophical and ideological differences
(Hobbs, 1998a). In reviewing school-based initiatives in the United States, I will
describe some approaches now under way in American schools, examine the
public anxieties about media literacy that may shape the work of practitioners,
and identify some challenges that will face K-12 educators in the future.

EARLY-CHILDHOOD EDUCATION

In early-childhood education, media literacy may be directed at parents to

emphasize the value of selecting programs, setting media use limits, and devel-
oping family communication strategies that promote media as a learning tool.
Many proponents of media literacy in early-childhood education approach the
issue from the social scientific media effects or public health perspective. For
example, Remote Control Childhood (Levin, 1998), published by the National
Association for the Education of Young Children, provides numerous practical
strategies for early-childhood educators to examine questions of media vio-
lence, imitation, and aggressive play with children aged 3 to 8. In the late 1990s,
Our Lady of Malibu School in Malibu, California, developed a media literacy
initiative with elementary students, exploring consumerism, representation, and
violence prevention, and conducted an animation workshop for fifth- to eighth-
grade students to support values-oriented education. Forest Knolls Elementary
School in Silver Spring, Maryland, embeds a communication arts focus into its
program for students in Grades 4 and 5, in which students learn about journalism
by comparing and contrasting the differences between newspaper and television
news, analyzing patterns in news coverage, and interviewing and writing news
articles and television reports. Other communities have begun to explore media
issues in the context of family communication through collaborative partner-
ships with educators. For example, in a rural Massachusetts community west of
Springfield, a team of social workers established a community-wide study
group on issues related to the effects of media on children, which led them to
develop a day-long forum on media literacy for parents, day care providers,
social service workers, and early-childhood educators. Such efforts increase
awareness concerning the appropriate uses of media and technology with young
children; more important, these efforts serve to introduce the concept of critical
thinking about the media to young children and their parents.

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46 AMERICAN BEHAVIORAL SCIENTIST

ENGLISH AND LANGUAGE ARTS EDUCATION

An increasing number of literacy scholars and practitioners recognize that

films, Web sites, television programs, magazines, newspapers, and even popular
music are “texts” that communicate and carry meaning to “readers.” In a sense,
literacy educators are responding to the social and cultural changes brought
about by the increased dominance of visual and electronic media in the culture.
A recent publication of the International Reading Association included more
than 60 research articles about the relationship between visual and communica-
tion media as tools in the development of literacy skills (Flood, Heath, & Lapp,
1997). Literacy educators with interests in media literacy generally adopt per-
spectives of textual analysis and sociocultural critical theory from the disci-
plines of the humanities, semiotics, and cultural studies, and some make use of
educational research and learning theory.
Teachers say that including a range of diverse narrative and expository texts
from the realms of film, television, popular print media, radio, and the Internet
helps create authentic learning environments that can connect the classroom to
the living room (Foster, 1998; Krueger & Christel, 2001; Teasely & Wilder,
1997). Using critical questions to stimulate students’ active reading response is
increasingly a common classroom practice, and this instructional strategy has
been extended to include the texts of popular culture, including television, mov-
ies, and popular music (Alvermann, Moon, & Hagood, 1999). Research on the
effects of media analysis activities shows that in high school classrooms, such
practices create an instructional context that measurably strengthens students’
reading comprehension strategies and writing skills (Hobbs & Frost, 2003).
Such research is beginning to allay the fears of some instructional leaders that
media literacy is not rigorous or academically challenging.
These fears have also been alleviated by the work of Robert Scholes from
Brown University, whose work on the Pacesetter English program helped bring
media literacy into the advanced placement curriculum in high school English.
In this program, English educators are urged to incorporate a wide range of texts
beyond the traditional literary canon, including film, television, advertising, the
Internet, and popular media (College Board, 2000). In English education, teach-
ers aim to help students understand the process by which authors convey mean-
ing about experience. Scholes (1987) emphasized that the media do not offer
transparent reflections of events or people but instead, interpretations presented
with varying degrees of reliability and power. Scholes wrote,

The point is not to pretend to offer students some magic talisman that will enable
them to tell truth from falsehood in the media, but rather help them understand
“mediation” (the pouring of raw data through the sieve of any particular media) as
a textual process that requires interpretation. (p. 140)

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 Hobbs / SCHOOL-BASED INITIATIVES 47

Other educational leaders interested in the intersection of literacy and technol-

ogy have joined with scholars to emphasize that students need opportunities to
use visual and electronic tools to create, not just analyze, media texts. The board
of directors of the National Council of Teachers of English (2003), a member-
ship organization of 60,000 teachers, approved a resolution stating that they will
(a) encourage preservice, in-service, and staff development programs that will
focus on new literacies, multimedia composition, and a broadened concept of
literacy; (b) encourage research and develop models of district, school, and
classroom policies that will promote multimedia composition; and (c) encour-
age the integration of multimedia composition into English language arts curric-
ulum and teacher education and the refinement of related standards at local,
state, and national levels. This resolution provides further evidence that among
mainstream K-12 educators, the concept of literacy is being broadened to
include multimedia forms of expression and communication.

STATEWIDE INITIATIVES BUILD MOMENTUM

In 1998, the state of Texas codified media literacy within the context of Eng-
lish language arts as viewing and representing skills. In addition to offering a
high school elective course in media literacy, the Texas framework for English
language arts and reading emphasizes media literacy in Grades 4 through 12 via
the processes of understanding, analyzing, and creating media messages,
including nonfiction, visual media, and electronic technology sources. The state
education framework also mandates that students use a variety of media formats
and technology tools—such as photography, video cameras, microphones, pre-
sentation and graphic design software—to create their own media messages.
For example, in Grade 10, students are required to work with a small team to
produce a 5- to 7-minute video documentary about a social issue in their com-
munity (Texas Education Agency, 1998). The high-stakes test that all Texas stu-
dents must pass before graduation now includes a component in which students
must analyze persuasive techniques in advertising. In large part because the
state of Texas has validated media literacy, there has been a rapid increase in the
number of resources and curriculum materials available to K-12 educators. For
example, the Center for Media Literacy’s (2004b) online catalog carries more
than 300 videos, books, and other materials available for use by students, teach-
ers, parents, and scholars, and nearly all major educational publishers include
some materials on the subject. With more than 4 million K-12 students enrolled
in Texas schools (more than any other state except California), the state’s
leadership has helped increase the public visibility of media literacy among
educators nationwide.
In another statewide initiative, Maryland developed a public-private partner-
ship between the Discovery Channel and the Maryland State Department of
Education, which led to the creation of Assignment: Media Literacy, a compre-

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48 AMERICAN BEHAVIORAL SCIENTIST

hensive curriculum that connects media literacy to the state’s education stan-
dards in English, social studies, and health. Initiated as part of the cable indus-
try’s response to the school massacre in Littleton, Colorado, more than 3,000
teachers in the state received a day-long staff development program along with
print and video instructional materials, which were provided free of charge to
schools. Curriculum topics include asking critical questions, exploration of the
role of video games in social and family relationships, television ratings and
reviews, journalism and television news making, stereotypes, media representa-
tions of the Civil War, media violence in sports, and celebrities and their effect
on identity, among other topics (Hobbs, 1999). Evaluation data reveal high lev-
els of teacher enthusiasm but not uniform implementation of the curriculum,
and a survey of elementary students shows that students believed they were
more critical viewers, more cautious about advertising, and more skeptical of
Internet content. Students also were more skillful in recognizing a media mes-
sage’s purpose, the message genre, and point of view (Kubey & Serafin, 2001).
This kind of public-private collaboration has drawn the ire of media activists
who have charged that such collaborations with “Big Media” are co-opting the
media literacy movement. The Action Coalition for Media Education was
founded by the New Mexico Media Literacy Project on the premise that media
literacy educators must exclude media companies from providing financial sup-
port for the development of the field, and that media literacy education must be
closely tied to media reform efforts (Action Coalition for Media Education,
2004). The New Mexico Media Literacy Project (2002) accepts the thesis that
“our mainstream media, led by the major global media corporations, have joined
the Dark Side” (p. 1; see also Pacatte, 2000). The New Mexico Media Literacy
Project is an outreach program of Albuquerque Academy, a private K-12 school,
and the tireless project director Bob McCannon makes more than 150 presenta-
tions to students and teachers annually, donating his fees to support the organi-
zation. Topics include analyzing sexual imagery in beer advertising, media mar-
keting and the tobacco industry, strategies of persuasion and media
manipulation, and the health risks of television viewing.
Although researchers have begun to evaluate the effectiveness of media liter-
acy programs in schools, few studies have been published. One of the challenges
faced by most evaluators is the question of conducting research that takes into
account the real-life characteristics of the school environment, including imple-
mentation by ordinary teachers, not specially trained experts. Many factors
encourage (or discourage) K-12 teachers from implementing curriculum mate-
rials in the way that they are intended to be used. Although funding agencies
place a premium on scientifically evaluated curriculum, teachers rarely (if ever)
implement instructional materials according to the teachers’ manual. Not only
does this limit the validity of research evidence but also, according to Hollis,
Kileen, and Doyon (2003),

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 Hobbs / SCHOOL-BASED INITIATIVES 49

much of what might make a curriculum valuable to a teacher, such as the flexibility
to teach it in whatever way they want, may be exactly the factor that hinders the
ability of a curriculum to achieve its greatest effect. (p. 1)

Further research should examine how teachers actually use media literacy mate-
rials (including videos and lesson plans) in the classroom, examining what
changes may occur after teachers have participated in an after-school workshop,
training program, or summer institute.

MEDIA PRODUCTION AND MEDIA ARTS

Another permutation of media literacy in K-12 education emphasizes stu-

dents as media makers, composing for school newspapers and video yearbooks;
creating public service announcements, narrative films, and music videos; writ-
ing film scripts, song lyrics, and magazine articles; and designing Web sites and
video games. There are more than 10,000 high school journalism teachers and
more than 1,500 media/communications specialists in K-12 schools in the
United States (Market Data Retrieval, 2003). Since the 1980s, media production
facilities have been present in nearly half of American high schools, with elec-
tive courses offered to students, often as part of vocational education (Cuban,
2002). In these courses, students learn how to operate media production equip-
ment including cameras, switching and sound equipment, and editing and image
manipulation software.
However, it is important to note that media literacy educators have long held
some anxiety about the value of media production as an end in itself. Masterman
(1985) noted, “Practical activity does not, in itself, constitute media education,”
warning about the technicist trap, the tendency to see media education as a series
of purely technical operations, which can lead to student media production
functioning as “busywork, and in its more advanced manifestations, a form
of cultural reproduction in which dominant practices become naturalized”
(pp. 26-27). Media production activities must support the development of
critical-thinking skills about the media. But as a result of the lowering cost and
increasing availability of electronic technologies, combined with student inter-
est in media production, there has been a steady growth in such instructional
practices at the secondary level (Hall, 2003). In particular, many video produc-
tion programs are taught by former media professionals who may (or may not)
emphasize the development of critical thinking about the media, adolescent per-
sonal development, or political activism (Goldfarb, 2002).
Although media production teachers once had a schoolwide monopoly with
their elective production classes, today some students have access to video cam-
corders, digital cameras, and editing and image manipulation software at home.
Secondary teachers from the subject areas of the humanities, foreign language,
and sciences are also more likely to give students the opportunity to create

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50 AMERICAN BEHAVIORAL SCIENTIST

messages in nonprint forms (Brooks, 2003; Bruce, 2002; Gardner, 2003). With
the rapidly decreasing costs of video camcorders and editing software, the skills
of composition using edited visual images, language, and sound will eventually
become routine experiences for adolescents. But because schools change so
slowly, and because the emphasis on K-12 educational technology has placed
the Internet and computers (and not digital cameras or video production) at the
center of the curriculum, it is probably likely that many young people will first
encounter media production experiences as a homework activity or in an out-of-
school context. After-school programs in media production are now common in
hundreds of American cities, as exemplified by the M.A.R.S. program in Phila-
delphia, an after-school program for low-income African American teen males
in which students write scripts, design storyboards, and create videos. The Lis-
ten Up network (2004) provides a valuable distribution function for similar
youth media programs, allowing people to view online streaming video clips of
youth-produced work. And new forms of media production are emerging, as
Jenkins (2004) described participants in a GlobalKidz workshop in New York,
for example, who worked with video game professionals to construct a game
about racial profiling at airports. Students encountered important ethical issues
in the process. How were they going to represent racial differences? Were they
going to perpetuate or challenge stereotypes? These experiences contribute
enormously to building critical-thinking and communication skills that accord-
ing to Jenkins, lead youth to view commercial media content with a more self-
conscious perspective.

DISTRICT LEVEL INITIATIVES

Magnet schools were originally designed as a strategy by large urban school

districts to promote desegregation of neighborhood schools (Waldrip, 2000).
Magnet schools enable students to choose to attend any school that offers the
curriculum focus of their choice. During the past 10 years, many school districts
have used “communication arts” as a theme for building their secondary pro-
grams, offering students a rich array of elective courses in graphic design, video
production, journalism, photography, film study, drama, and theater. Media lit-
eracy practices have transformed many of these schools so that they focus less
on the acquisition of technology skills and more on critical thinking and the
complex processes involved in the communication of meaning through sym-
bolic forms (Cohen, 1994). For example, the Norrback Avenue School in
Worcester, Massachusetts, offers K-6 students an integrated program of com-
munication arts including public speaking, media literacy, media production,
dramatics, and telecommunication. At the high school level, the Communica-
tion Arts High School in San Antonio, Texas, emphasizes a humanities-focused,
multimedia literacy approach, and unlike some magnet schools, it does not limit

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 Hobbs / SCHOOL-BASED INITIATIVES 51

recruitment to students who are interested only in communications careers. This

program does not emphasize narrow career specialization in journalism or
radio-television broadcasting. The San Antonio Communication Arts High
School is based on the premise that the 21st century will demand strong
communication skills in reading, writing, speaking, listening, and thinking.
At Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, Maryland, educators
have offered, since 1988, the Communication Arts Program, a highly selective
program for students who wish to integrate the study of media and communica-
tion across the curriculum. This program provides numerous opportunities for
students to develop media literacy skills through activities that link coursework
in social studies, language arts, and media production. Students engage in for-
mal debates, analyze press coverage of political campaigns, produce documen-
taries, write scripts, analyze films, perform in plays, design Web sites, conduct
interviews, and complete community service projects. In their senior year, stu-
dents demonstrate their communication competencies in a formal, public inter-
view where they present a portfolio of work they have completed to document
their progress. The program has been so successful that in the 2004-2005 school
year, the district is offering a Media Literacy Academy, which will be open to all
students in the district and will include two required interdisciplinary courses in
media literacy along with a wide range of electives in communication arts.

PUBLIC ANXIETIES ABOUT MEDIA LITERACY IN EDUCATION

Although the use of popular-culture materials, including advertising, televi-

sion programs, movies, and popular music, are becoming more and more com-
mon in American schools, there is little widespread public enthusiasm for the
use of popular mass media texts among most education and business leaders,
and even less among parents and community leaders. Political leaders may
occasionally acknowledge the value of media literacy (Lieberman, 1996), but so
far, few have been willing to stand up and praise the benefits of teaching kids to
critically analyze political campaign advertisements. The appropriate use of
popular-culture texts in the classroom generates significant discussion among
educators, parents, and community leaders alike. Is it really a good thing to have
kids critically analyze an episode of Dateline NBC in their 10th-grade English
class? Should they not be reading Shakespeare? Is media literacy improving
public education or dumbing it down?
The best way to characterize the differing dimensions of this debate is to
describe an experience I had in North Carolina a few years ago when offering a
staff development program for English teachers. I was demonstrating how tele-
vision news, advertising, and television dramas could be used to teach textual
analysis skills and support literacy development. When it came time for
questions, a teacher said,

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52 AMERICAN BEHAVIORAL SCIENTIST

Look, I’ve got 180 days and I see these kids for 45 minutes a day. I think I’d rather
teach them these critical analysis skills by showing them fine works of classic film
like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Citizen Kane and maybe we could read The
New York Times and I could teach these same questioning skills with good
media—media that will enrich and stimulate them.

Immediately following this comment, another teacher in the other corner of the
room jumped up to the microphone and said,

Wait a minute. These kids for the rest of their lives are going to be watching TV—
dramas, sitcoms, news, and advertising. I’m not sure that they’re going to learn
how to critically analyze commercials by watching Dr. Caligari and analyzing
Citizen Kane.

What this teacher was referring to was the concept of teaching for transfer, the
goal of helping meanings, expectations, generalizations, concepts, or insights
developed in one learning situation to be employed in others. Perkins and
Salomon (1988) described many strategies for increasing transfer that involve
making the learning experience similar to the situations to which one wants
transfer to occur. Media literacy educators will commonly make the argument
that if students are to be able to critically analyze media messages in the world
outside the classroom, it is important to bring into the classroom examples of
contemporary media culture that are part of their lived experience.
But as a former public official (an elected member of my community’s school
board), I am well aware of just how politically complex this question may
become. Imagine a health teacher who is critically analyzing an episode of Joe
Millionaire to explore the issue of gender stereotyping. A parent who will not let
her children watch that particular program is likely to call the principal when she
learns about it. Another parent will call if he believes that the teacher is selling a
political agenda, not instructing about health. Another parent will claim that the
teacher is simply wasting valuable classroom time with trivia. What is a school
administrator to do? Similarly, teachers may wonder,

If I want to teach about media violence, or racism, sexism, or stereotyping, or

homophobia as depicted in the media, should I expose students to videotaped
examples of these types of messages, knowing that different people interpret mes-
sages in different ways and knowing that I cannot control students’ interpretation
of messages?

The appropriate use of popular-culture texts in the classroom generates more

great debates among media literacy educators and introduces some rich and
complex questions for future research.
Another common critique of use of media, technology, and popular culture
concerns the belief that the superficiality and commercial value of popular-
culture texts limit their usefulness. Applebee (1996) wrote that popular-culture
texts, when used in the secondary English classroom, are often “too transparent

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 Hobbs / SCHOOL-BASED INITIATIVES 53

or too thin to support much discussion or debate. . . . When they are brought into
the classroom . . . there may be little to sustain conversation” (p. 55). I have
observed classrooms where teachers are just beginning to learn to use media,
technology, and popular-culture texts to help students strengthen literacy skills.
Sometimes the level of discussion did not raise beyond superficial information
sharing about the latest details of a particular celebrity’s latest boyfriend trou-
bles, concrete descriptions of plots and characters, half-hearted debates about
the influence of media on behavior, or the relative merits or lack of quality in
particular texts. Such discussions may sometimes confirm teachers’ fears that
they are indeed wasting valuable classroom time with lunchroom-type conver-
sation that does little to promote critical thinking. Based on my experience as a
teacher-educator, I have observed that it takes about 3 years of practice, sup-
ported by staff development and peer critique, to enable teachers to develop the
new skills and knowledge they need to effectively use media texts in the class-
room to promote critical-thinking and analysis skills (Hobbs, 1998b).
Some educational leaders worry about the potential of media literacy to be
used as a tool for propagandizing by the teacher, as slickly produced media liter-
acy videos warn students that advertising is destroying the environment, that
video games are causing young boys to be violent, or that women’s magazines
are dehumanizing to adolescent girls. Callahan (2001) has documented that
some teachers are aware when media literacy materials that they want to use in
the classroom will be perceived as controversial by parents or school district
officials. A number of school districts have adopted policies to minimize the
possibility of parental disapproval and to encourage teachers to reflect carefully
on their specific educational goals when using films and videos in the classroom
(Zirkel, 1999). Because of perceived misuse of entertainment media in the class-
room, many school districts across the nation have instituted policies that limit
teachers’ use of popular films, television programs, and music. Some districts
have a “controversial learning resources” policy that defines such materials as
those “not included in the approved learning resources of the district and which
are subject to disagreement as to appropriateness because they relate to contro-
versial issues or present material in a manner or context which is itself contro-
versial” (Zirkel, 1999, p. 70). These policies exist because in many school dis-
tricts, teachers have used video and other media in ways that are not truly
educational. Educators wishing to bring media literacy skills to their students
will undoubtedly wrestle with preexisting contexts in some schools where video
is used as a classroom babysitter by burned-out, incompetent teachers.
The ongoing and seemingly eternal tensions between “basic skills” and
“informal learning” combine with the tendency of educators to downplay or
ignore the role of home-based communication technologies such as television,
radio, and video games in the lives of their students. These factors may make it
difficult for media literacy to ever gain real visibility among K-12 education
leaders (Kubey, 1998). The longstanding and traditional antipathy between
classic/elite culture and popular/mass culture has been part of the education

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54 AMERICAN BEHAVIORAL SCIENTIST

landscape for more than 100 years (Dewey, 1916/1997). Teachers’ “irrational
loyalty to reading and writing” (Flood et al., 1997, p. xvi) may create resistance
to the use of contemporary media and technology texts, stemming from their
fears that children’s media and technology use displaces their use of print, a fear
that is not well supported in a comprehensive review of 30 years of social
scientific research evidence (Neuman, 1991).
In responding to some of these public anxieties about media literacy, educa-
tors have begun to build a knowledge base for the next generation by document-
ing their own instructional practices (Duncan, 1997; Worsnop, 1994). Scholars
have examined the broad institutional factors that may lead teachers to actively
use or ignore media and popular culture as a teaching resource (Cuban, 1986;
Hobbs, 1994; Oppenheimer, 2003; Tyner, 1998). In the past 5 years, case-study
research and first-person narratives have emerged from classroom teachers and
after-school educators who document both the satisfactions and challenges
associated with the use of popular music, advertising, film, television, video
games, and popular fiction in the classroom (Beumer-Johnson, 2000; Callahan,
2001; Feree, 2001; Hurrell, 2001; Kist, 2000; Michie, 1999; Sommer, 2001;
Stevens, 2001). These teachers and scholars bring a perspective that emphasizes
media and popular culture as texts that can promote student learning; through
thoughtful reflection about “what works and why” in the classroom, this young
generation of practitioners is leading media literacy education to the next stage
of development.

UNIFYING EDUCATIONAL GOALS TO

ACHIEVE LITERACY FOR THE INFORMATION AGE

Despite all the diverse approaches to media literacy in American schools,

there have been several efforts to promote the kind of dialogue and debate to
help bring about national-level consensus to identify priorities for the future
concerning the relationship between technology, literacy, and education. Media
literacy is beginning to be recognized as one dimension of the essential compe-
tencies required for life in an information age. Educators are beginning to distin-
guish between learning skills, such as those process-oriented cognitive, com-
munication, and problem-solving skills (displayed in Table 1 below) and
learning tools, which include information and communication technologies
such as computers, networking, audio, video, and other media tools. Edu-
cational technologists seem finally to have recognized that any vision of 21st-
century learning must de-emphasize the “tool focus” that has been prevalent in
much scholarship about technology in education throughout the 1990s, and
emphasize instead the development of students’ critical thinking, communica-
tion, collaboration, and creativity.
Will media literacy educators be willing to enter into dialogue with their col-
leagues in the fields of educational technology and library/information skills

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 Hobbs / SCHOOL-BASED INITIATIVES 55

TABLE 1: 21st-Century Learning Skills

Information and Information and media literacy

Communication Skills Accessing, analyzing, managing, integrating, evaluating,
and creating information in a variety of forms and
media; understanding the role of media in society.
Communication
Understanding, managing, and creating effective oral,
written, and multimedia communication in a variety of
forms and contexts.
Thinking and Critical thinking and systems thinking
Problem Solving Skills Exercising sound reasoning in understanding and making
complex choices; understanding the interconnections
among systems.
Problem identification, formulation, and solution
Ability to frame, analyze, and solve problems.
Creativity and intellectual curiosity
Developing, implementing, and communicating new
ideas to others; staying open and responsive to new and
diverse perspectives.
Interpersonal and Interpersonal and collaborative
Self-Directional Skills Demonstrating teamwork and leadership; adapting to
varied roles and responsibilities; working productively
with others; exercising empathy; respecting diverse
perspectives.
Self-direction
Monitoring one’s own understanding and learning needs;
locating appropriate resources, transferring learning
from one domain to another.
Accountability and adaptability
Exercising personal responsibility and flexibility in
personal, workplace, and community contexts; setting
and meeting high standards and goals for oneself and
others; tolerating ambiguity.
Social responsibility
Acting responsibly with the interests of the larger
community in mind; demonstrating ethical behavior in
personal, workplace, and community contexts.

SOURCE: Partnership for 21st Century Skills (2003).

about the process of integrating media literacy within a broader context of 21st-
century learning skills? Or will the discourse of opposition to media power, so
compelling and attractive to radical educators and activists, encourage a stance
that keeps them apart from their colleagues in allied fields? For media education
activists who see media literacy education as a vehicle to change the media sys-
tem itself, there may be little incentive to form such partnerships, particularly
with technology educators who have for 25 years gladly collaborated with the
business community. But for those media educators who see media literacy as a
vehicle to change the education system and to affect the lives of children and
youth, such partnerships may be welcome. Because of the ongoing controversy,

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56 AMERICAN BEHAVIORAL SCIENTIST

such debates are likely to continue to generate the lion’s share of media attention
to the topic of media literacy (WNYC, 2001).
There is no shortage of flowery language or theories about the promise and
potential of media literacy and popular culture in education, as academic
authors from many different disciplines conclude their critiques of media, tech-
nology, and popular culture by calling, often urgently and eloquently, for media
literacy (Gitlin, 2001; Kellner, 1995). But although it is easy to recommend
media literacy as an antidote, as Bazalgette, Bevort, and Savino (1992) pointed
out, “The realities of teaching and learning [media literacy] are harder to define
and share” (p. 3). In reviewing accounts of practice of media education in more
than a dozen countries, they emphasized that what is institutionally appropriate
in one setting may not be so in another. However, those who include popular cul-
ture in the classroom must be responsive to what Masterman (1985) has identi-
fied as the central objective: to “develop in pupils enough self-confidence and
critical maturity to be able to apply critical judgments to media texts which they
will encounter in the future” (p. 24). Teachers must design learning experiences
that help students, as quickly as possible, to stand on their own two feet—able to
critically analyze and create messages in a culture that is densely saturated with
an ever-changing array of media messages and technology tools.
Media literacy in the United States is emerging not only from statewide or
school district initiatives but also from the bottom-up energy of individual
teachers who value the way that using media, technology, and popular culture
improves the quality of student motivation, self-expression, or communication,
or who are passionate about helping young people understand, challenge, and
transform media’s power in maintaining status quo power relationships through
social and political activism. Educators’ struggles to bring media literacy into
the context of the K-12 environment remind us that this work is not for the faint
of heart. Media literacy education depends on the courage and perseverance of
individual teachers who are inspired and motivated by a wide range of different
understandings about the role of the mass media and popular culture in society.
Sadly, many teachers are still teaching more or less the same way as they did
when they started in their profession more than 25 years ago. With the average
American teacher now aged 46 and likely to stay in education until retirement
(Keller & Manzo, 2003), there are still many thousands of schools in the United
States where most students get little meaningful time during the course of 12
years to engage in critical thinking about media messages or to create messages
using technology tools. In many schools, the only meaningful relationship
between literacy and technology is the use of word processing software. Most
teachers simply have not had the time (or the perceived need) to become fluent in
using media tools or the training to understand how to use media texts or media
issues to promote critical thinking. By and large, schools of education have yet
to discover media literacy. Because even young teachers are often not experi-
enced with how to analyze visual or electronic messages, and do not themselves
know how to create messages using media and technology, strengthening young

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 Hobbs / SCHOOL-BASED INITIATIVES 57

people’s media literacy skills in the 21st century will continue to be an enormous
challenge.

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RENEE HOBBS is an associate professor of broadcasting, telecommunication, and mass

media at Temple University’s School of Communications and Theater. She directs the Media
Education Lab at Temple University, which provides community outreach and research ini-
tiatives in media literacy, and she codirects the Ph.D. program in media and mass communi-
cation. Her research explores the development of reasoning, communication, and critical-
thinking skills in response to media literacy instruction, the impact of youth media produc-
tion, and the role of media arts and technologies in the teaching and learning process. She
received an Ed.D. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, an M.A. in communica-
tion studies from the University of Michigan, and a B.A. in English literature and film/video
studies from the University of Michigan.

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