Teachers' Media Literacy in Educational Planning: A Large-Scale Quantitative Study in the Dominican Republic

Media and information literacy (MIL) have become a core component of teachers’ professional competence; however, its integration into educational planning remains uneven and is frequently reduced to the instrumental use of digital technologies. Empirical evidence remains scarce in Latin America and the Caribbean. This study examined self-assessed MIL and its reported integration into educational planning among 1,218 Dominican primary school teachers. A quantitative, non-experimental, descriptive, and cross-sectional design used a questionnaire adapted from the ALFAMED/COMPEMED framework, comprising 41 competence items and ten classroom-application items across three domains—knowledge, comprehension, and expression—and ten dimensions. Mann–Whitney U and Kruskal–Wallis H tests, followed by Dunn’s comparisons with Benjamini–Hochberg correction, examined differences by socio-demographic and training variables. Mean domain scores exceeded the scale midpoint (knowledge = 73.9, expression = 71.4, and comprehension = 71.3 on a 0–100 scale), but development was uneven: 55.7% rated themselves competent in accessing, retrieving, and evaluating information, compared with 30.5% in media production. Recent training was most consistently associated with higher scores across all domains (p < .001), whereas teaching experience showed no significant association. The findings reveal a gap between technological familiarity and intentional pedagogical integration and support reorienting professional development toward the expressive, critical, creative, and participatory dimensions of MIL. Further research should examine the instrument’s factorial validity and complement self-reported data with observations of actual classroom planning.