Critical Media Literacy: A Pedagogy for New Literacies and Urban Youth

Using new literacies critically can be an excellent pedagogy for motivating and empowering students who feel alienated from their school and society. This article describes how one middle school teacher engaged his inner-city English language learners with critical media literacy as a way of making their learning more meaningful and motivating. The students interviewed and photographed community members during walking fieldtrips in their neighborhood as well as classroom interviews with guest speakers. During their outings, students explored the community using an inquiry-based approach for observing and documenting the assets and the problems around their school. As part of the critical media literacy, students analyzed portrayals in the media of Latinos like themselves and their neighborhood. This created an opportunity for them to compare their findings with the mainstream reporting from the local newspaper. As a summative project, the students created alternative representations of their concerns and findings in which they discussed the assets in their community as well as ideas for solving some of the problems. Not only did the students increase their self-esteem and sense of pride in their community, they also demonstrated substantial academic gains in their English language development.