Sait Tuzel

Poverty continues to constrain the life chances of many learners across the world. While significant sociological and geographical work has explored patterns of educational and other disadvantage that are associated with low incomes there are limited studies focussing on the role of media literacy in such contexts. Media literacy education is considered by many to be a successful practice to not only foster students’ voice, identity and creativity, but also to teach critical thinking and civic engagement with and via media messages. While there is undoubtedly some difference in how the term media literacy is interpreted across the world and its role in the curriculum, in this panel we bring together six case studies focussed on the intersection of media literacy and educational inequality. The panel offers research based perspectives on media literacy in contexts of high poverty and disadvantage. The aim of the panel is to consider how the most effective media literacy practices might be developed in response to the challenges outlined above.

The chair, Dr. Jeff Share will introduce the concept of critical media literacy. The first panelist, Dr. ML White will explore how visual practices can be used to challenge the stereotypical deficit models of ‘the poor’ and the potential for innovative social justice work in teacher education in the UK. The second panelist, Dr. Yonty Friesem will describe the struggles of a first year teacher to bring media literacy to the poorest elementary school in Hartford, CT, USA. The third panelist, Dr. Sait Tuzel will portray a Turkish initiative that brings together a poor Kurdish school and an affluent Turkish school through a media literacy program in Turkey. The fourth panelist, Dr. Petra Grell will talk about socio-cultural contexts of media literacy in highly poor neighborhoods in Germany. The fifth panelist, Dr. Shobha Avadhani will discuss a media literacy initiative in a middle school in Singapore to address this smart city’s inequalities. The sixth panelist, Dr. David Gonzalez-Hernandez, will share his study on a media literacy program in marginal neighborhoods on both sides of the San Diego – Tijuana border. The discussant, Dr. Renee Hobbs will review all the six cases as she provides a global perspective on the use of media literacy in high poverty neighborhoods.

In this panel, participants will learn about the challenges and benefits of teaching media literacy in distinct social contexts as we explore and challenge the concept of digital divide.

Chair Jeff Share, U of California - Los Angeles

ML White, U of East London
Yonty Friesem, Central Connecticut State U
Sait Tuzel, Media Education LAb
Petra Grell, Technical U Darmstadt
Shobha Avadhani, National U of Singapore
David Gonzalez Hernandez, U California, San Diego
Respondent Renee Hobbs, U of Rhode Island

Although we live in a global society, educators face many challenges in finding meaningful ways to connect students to people of other cultures. This paper offers a case study of a collaboration between teachers in the US and Turkey, where 7th grade students interacted with each other via online social media as a means to promote cultural understanding. In a close analysis of a single learning activity, we found that children had opportunities to share ideas informally through social media, using their digital voices to share meaning using online writing, posting of images and hyperlinks. This study found that students valued the opportunity to develop relationships with each other and generally engaged in sharing their common interests in Hollywood movies, actors, celebrities, videogames and television shows. However, not all teachers valued the use of popular culture as a means to find common ground. Indeed, teachers had widely differing perspectives of the value of this activity. Through informal communication about popular culture in a «Getting to Know You» activity, students themselves discovered that their common ground knowledge tended to be US-centric, as American students lacked access to Turkish popular culture. However, the learning activity enabled students themselves to recognize asymmetrical power dynamics that exist in global media culture.

Si bien vivimos en una sociedad global, los educadores se enfrentan a numerosos desafíos a la hora de hallar formas significativas de conectar a los alumnos con gente de otras culturas. Este artículo muestra un caso práctico de colaboración entre profesores de los Estados Unidos y Turquía, en el que alumnos de séptimo grado interactuaron entre sí a través de las redes sociales con el fin de promover la comprensión cultural. Al analizar una única actividad de aprendizaje hallamos que los alumnos tenían la oportunidad de compartir ideas informalmente a través de las redes sociales, usando su voz digital para compartir significados mediante la escritura online, publicación de imágenes e hipervínculos. Este estudio halló que los alumnos valoraban la oportunidad de relacionarse entre sí y tendían a compartir su interés común en películas de Hollywood, actores, famosos, videojuegos y programas de televisión. Sin embargo, no todos los profesores valoraban el uso de la cultura popular como medio para la búsqueda de puntos en común. En efecto, los profesores tenían perspectivas muy distintas sobre el valor de esta actividad. Mediante la comunicación informal en torno a la cultura popular en una actividad de conocimiento mutuo, los propios alumnos descubrieron que sus conocimientos en común tendían a estar centrados en los Estados Unidos, en tanto en cuanto los alumnos americanos no tenían acceso a la cultura popular turca. Sin embargo, la actividad de aprendizaje permitió a los propios alumnos reconocer las dinámicas de poder asimétrico que existen en la cultura mediática global.

Media literacy has been widely debated in Turkey since the early 2000s and has been in the curriculum of the secondary schools as an optional subject for nearly a decade. During this time period, about four million students have received media literacy education. The multidisciplinary structure of media literacy has contributed to the interest of many researchers from varying fields. These researchers, who have different viewpoints, acceptations and expectations, have formed certain groups in a short time period and have started to defend their particular media literacy approaches and practices. This study examines the basic debates and issues that have emerged in Turkey’s short but active movement to educate in the area of media literacy. Issues include the question of which teachers (trained in education or communication) should teach the media literacy classes, the role of the government media regulatory agency in media literacy, and the debates on protective and empowerment approaches. In addition, the debates on educational censorship, textbooks, and media literacy have been integrated in the educational system under which models have been focused. Because of the focus on asking who is responsible for media literacy in Turkey, there has been less attention to issues of pedagogy, instructional strategies and curriculum resources. The blame is not completely on the government ministries as academic in-fighting also fuels debates about the future of media literacy in Turkey. Such territorial debates about the locus of media literacy may limit the growth of the field.

Presentation by Sait Tuzel and Renee Hobbs demonstrates how online social networking was used to promote dialogue between Turkish and American middle-school students. This project was a global collaboration designed to advance knowledge and demystify cultural stereotypes. Teachers developed three lesson plans that enable students to share information about culture and values of their family and community, learn more about the history, cultural practices and social norms of these two cultures, and critically analyze popular entertainment media representations of culture and values. We examine teacher reflective writing about the construction of the project and student data including knowledge of Turkish and American culture, characteristics of the online content shared by students, and particular dimensions of online social interaction, including self-disclosure and questioning. This research contributes to advancing knowledge of best practices in the design, implementation and assessment of media literacy education programs designed to promote global education and cultural understanding.

Educators have a variety of beliefs and attitudes about the best ways to support students’ critical thinking, creativity, communication and collaboration skills by connecting the classroom to contemporary society, mass media and popular culture. Teachers who advance digital and media literacy may have a complex set of attitudes and habits of mind that influence their motivations to use digital media for learning. We conducted survey research with a sample of 2,820 Turkish educators to examine teachers’ motivations for digital learning, using a 48-item Likert scale instrument that assesses teachers’ perception of the value and relevance of six conceptual themes including attitudes towards technology tools, genres and formats; message content and quality; community connectedness; texts and audiences; media systems; and learner-centered focus. Digital learning motivation profiles reveal distinctive identity positions of social science, language arts, and ICT teachers in Turkey. The most common profiles include the identity positions of “Techie,” “Demystifier” and “Tastemaker.” Statistically significant associations were found between teachers’ subject-area specialization and their digital learning motivation profiles. Professional development programs should assess teachers’ digital learning motivation profiles and build learning experiences that expand upon the strengths of teachers’ beliefs and the conceptual themes of most importance to them.

Although we live in a global society, educators face many challenges in finding meaningful ways to connect students to people of other cultures. This paper offers a case study of a collaboration between teachers in the US and Turkey, where 7th grade students interacted with each other via online social media as a means to promote cultural understanding. In a close analysis of a single learning activity, we found that children had opportunities to share ideas informally through social media, using their digital voices to share meaning using online writing, posting of images and hyperlinks. This study found that students valued the opportunity to develop relationships with each other and generally engaged in sharing their common interests in Hollywood movies, actors, celebrities, videogames and television shows. However, not all teachers valued the use of popular culture as a means to find common ground. Indeed, teachers had widely differing perspectives of the value of this activity....

Although we live in a global society, educators face many challenges in finding meaningful ways to connect students to people of other cultures. This paper offers a case study of a collaboration between teachers in the US and Turkey, where 7th grade students interacted with each other via online social media as a means to promote cultural understanding. In a close analysis of a single learning activity, we found that children had opportunities to share ideas informally through social media, using their digital voices to share meaning using online writing, posting of images and hyperlinks. This study found that students valued the opportunity to develop relationships with each other and generally engaged in sharing their common interests in Hollywood movies, actors, celebrities, videogames and television shows. However, not all teachers valued the use of popular culture as a means to find common ground. Indeed, teachers had widely differing perspectives of the value of this activity....