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2015
Healthy Teens, Healthy Schools: How Media Literacy Can Renew Education in the United States (Rowman & Littlefield Education). My second book is intended for educators across levels and contexts in the shared responsibility of building critical media health literacy among adolescents. While the topic of health in the U.S. is predominantly framed as an individual choice and set of elective/learned behaviors, there are powerful institutional forces that both facilitate and impede widespread health literacy. It fully supports the “alignment, integration, and collaboration” model that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) release in July 2014. It makes sense in the 21st century for health promotion and public education to join forces in a systemic fashion. Visit my companion blog and read an excerpt from the Introduction at healthyteens.us.
2013
“Media Ecologies of Health Literacy: Case Studies of Educational Empowerment,” Journal of Digital and Media Literacy. Abstract: Government officials and medical professionals are greatly concerned about the health of children (ages 6-11) in the United States due to the increase in obesity-related illnesses. Risk factors include increased physical inactivity through the chronic uses of digital media and technologies and the lack of physical activity during school. While health education is required within U.S. schools, an integrated or holistic approach is absent. This article looks at three case studies of health education through the lens of media literacy. The discussion focuses on various factors that comprise educational ecologies of health literacy. Factors include media climate, collective empowerment, apprenticeships in social justice, and the importance of funding.
I co-edited three issues of the Journal of Media Literacy Education. You can read my introduction to the following issues: [Volume 4, Issue 2] [Volume 4, Issue 3] [Volume 5, Issue 1]
2012
“Blogging the field: An Emergent Continuum for Urban Teacher Development.” Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, 20(4), 387-414. Abstract: Preparing teachers to work in urban settings poses unique challenges, as urban communities are complex and require systemic understanding of students and their families, culture, and community. Pre-service teachers often harbor misconceptions about what it means to work in urban settings and many bring to their teacher education program minimal first hand experience. The purpose of this qualitative study was to understand pre-service teachers’ use of online journaling (or blogging) to contextualize, question, construct and transform their understanding of their initial field experience within an urban school setting. The study used critical discourse analysis to study 31 undergraduate students’ blogs in an introductory course prerequisite to entering an initial teacher certification program. The findings suggest transformative shifts in the areas of developing confidence and observation skills, understanding the complexity of schools, developing concern for others, promoting democratic ideals and becoming a professional.
2011
“Think global, act local: Expanding the agenda for media literacy education in the United States.” Library Trends, 60(2): 440-453. Abstract: The phrase “think global, act local” is used to frame the macro efforts of information literacy worldwide alongside the localized, grassroots efforts of media literacy education in the U.S. where there exists a complex and contradictory relationship among government, technology industry and educational practices. This article marries the global (macro) push for information literacy with the localized (micro) efforts at media literacy education in the U.S. and identifies emergent tensions and challenges associated with the production of information literate citizens within an educational system that is disconnected from the highly mediated lives of students outside of school. As a microcosm of this struggle, the article chronicles the emergence of the National Association for Media Literacy Education (NAMLE).
“The Coming of Age of Media Literacy.” The Journal of Media Literacy Education, 3(1). Abstract: This essay discusses the tensions between technology, schooling, and media literacy, and emphasizes the potential for MLE to contribute to democratic education.
“Building 21st-Century Teachers: An Intentional Pedagogy of Media Literacy Education.” Action in Teacher Education, 33(1):194-205. Abstract: High quality teacher education requires a complex body of knowledge, skills, and dispositions. This article identifies media literacy education as an intentional and essential framework in which to catalyze essential knowledge, skills, and dispositions for 21st-century teacher preparation. The multidimensional nature of media literacy education renders it a meaningful framework with which to contextualize the pursuit of technological proficiency, promote pedagogical excellence, and to magnify the democratic ideals and purposes of public education in the United States. This article aligns the National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers, principles of democratic education, and provides sample pedagogical skills essential to media literacy education.
2010
(with Julianne Bello). “Stewarding Urban Teacher Education in Newark: In Search of Reflection, Responsibility and Renewal.” Education and Democracy: A Journal of the National Network for Educational Renewal, 2, 155-168. Abstract: This article illuminates the joint stewardship of school-university partnerships through the undergraduate course, Public Purposes of Education: Democracy and Schooling. It provides a microcosmic view of simultaneous renewal of teacher education, K-12 schooling, and urban education through the lens of a field-based course that prepares undergraduate students to enter the teacher education program at MSU. Here we discuss specific learning outcomes, shared responsibilities of students and teachers, and the uses of assessments and technology to address emergent challenges of urban educational renewal through the school-university partnership.
2009
“A Social History of Media, Technology and Schooling.” Journal of Media Literacy Education ,1, 42-52. Abstract: This article explores the literature in the intersecting fields of media, technology and schooling in the United States across the past two centuries. It organizes the research from a social-historical perspective through a fictionalized interview with an archetypal third-generation urban public school teacher. This topography illustrates the problems and possibilities that emerge from the chronic push for technology in schools. Of particular mention are the privileging of orality and literacy through the common school reader, the mechanization of schooling through teaching machines and television, and the transformative yet still untapped potential of computers and the internet.
2008
Rethinking Technology in Schools (New York: Peter Lang). Cover Matter: Among the many challenges facing public schooling in the United States is the often irrelevant usage of technology in the classroom—in ways that support the textbook and computer industries more than student learning and achievement. This primer reframes the longstanding debate about instructional technology in school classrooms and challenges the reader to think more critically and conscientiously about the fundamental communication and technological processes that mediate learning and ultimately define education. The primer offers educators at all levels a three-dimensional map for exploring the philosophical, pedagogical, and practical uses of technology to serve rather than subvert the public purposes of education in a democracy.
2007
“Commerce in Schools: Four U.S. Perspectives.” Society and Business Review, 2(1), 98-120. Abstract: This article surveys the history, research and policies related to commerce in schooling (1890-2005) within the United States. The literature is organized according to four emergent U.S. perspectives—protectionist, celebrant, cultural critic, and educated consumer. The dominant U.S. assumptions of commercial media subscribe to a stimulus-response model of learning, rather than an active model of young people as constructing their own experiences with commercial media. Much of the research and policies about commercial media in schools reflect adult assumptions about how young people learn, rather than provide empirical research about how young people actually interact with commercial texts while in school. The article questions an excessive emphasis on the texts and technologies of instruction and calls for more empirical research that is grounded in theories of social constructivism, symbolic interactionism, and media education.
“Technology and Graduate Teacher Education: An Integrated Approach to Program Design.” In C. Crawford et al. (Eds.), Proceedings of Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education International Conference 2007 (pp. 1010-1017). Chesapeake, VA: AACE. Abstract: This paper documents the design and development of a graduate teacher education program in educational technology that bridges educational theory with technological practices through a framework consisting of philosophical, practical and pedagogical dimensions. The program is grounded in principles of media literacy and democratic practice while also engaging students in technological practices, as proscribed through state and national standards for technology in education. The paper emphasizes the need for school-university partnerships, educational technology praxis, and stronger connections with schools and local community agencies to support best pedagogical, as well as technological, practices.
2006
“Doing technology” in the college classroom: Media literacy as critical pedagogy. In R. Goldstein (Ed.). Useful Theory: Making Critical Education Practical (pp. 131-147). (New York: Peter Lang) Abstract: While critics often blame teachers and technology (or lack thereof) for poor performance among students, I argue the inadequacy lies within the philosophical and pedagogical approaches to using technology in the classroom. Our access and use of equipment must develop into a more critical, creative and comprehensive commitment to using technology in support of innovative teaching and learning instead of using teaching and learning to support innovative technologies. In this chapter, I offer a framework for incorporating technology in the classroom, one that is grounded in tenets of critical-interpretive theory and media literacy. Finally, I present a case study of “doing technology” that integrates the aforementioned theoretical framework within a real classroom and curriculum context.
“Four Steps to Standards Integration.” Learning and Leading with Technology, 34(3), 22-25. Abstract: It is too easy for teachers and library media specialists to entangle themselves in the multiple strands of standards: State core curriculum content standards, NETS-S, NETS-T, and the Information Literacy Standards (ALA). To prevent teachers from professionally drowning in this vast sea of accountability, the following exercise untangles the standards, and helps teachers to align their teaching style(s) with immediately accessible instructional technologies. Given the seductive nature of technological innovation, most teachers (and humans in general) will linger in fascination with new technologies, regardless of their educational value. This article outlines a curriculum design process that allows educators to visually assemble curriculum where standards are at the forefront of their teaching and instructional technologies play a supporting role.
“Student attitudes towards internet use at school.” Academic Exchange Quarterly, 10(2), 104-108. Abstract: This article presents portraits of student attitudes and understanding of internet use at home and school. Discursive data reveal a disconnect between social uses of the internet outside of school and linear individual uses of the internet for information access in school. These findings suggest classroom teachers should leverage students’ savvy social uses of the internet outside school to deepen and extend access to information and knowledge in the classroom.
“Online pedagogy: Beyond digital ‘chalk and talk.'” Academic Exchange Quarterly,10(1), 48-51. Abstract: Courseware provides efficient data-management for higher education; however, less clear are the ways it serves pedagogical innovation and democratic practice. This article illustrates the challenges of creating an authentic online pedagogy through a case study of a graduate level teacher education course. While professional felt needs drive in-service teachers to achieve online interdependence, lack of proficiency with the technological side of courseware and tension between process and product pose significant challenges to developing an authentic and democratic online pedagogy.
2004
“From savvy consumer to responsible citizen: Teen perspectives of advertising in the classroom.” The Journal of Media Literacy, 51(2), pp. 45-52. Abstract: As part of a larger study that qualitatively examines students’ understandings of and attitudes towards commercial media in the classroom, I offer a schema of four student perspectives to help guide teachers and teacher educators in the study of commercial media in the school classroom. [To obtain a copy of this issue send an email to NTelemedia@aol.com]
“How important is technology in urban education?” In S. Steinberg & J. Kincheloe (Eds.). 19 Urban Questions: Teaching in the City (pp. 210-218). New York: Peter Lang. Abstract: My answer to the question, “How important is technology in urban education?” has to do with renewing our commitment to urban education while downplaying the technologies. I do not wish to diminish the importance of technological proficiency, as it plays a significant role in achieving educational innovation. However, success within urban education requires an authentic and ecological approach to schooling. Urban schools are merely one component within a larger system that includes family, community, and government. Similarly, technology is merely one component within a larger system that involves professional development, leadership, communication, assessment, and ongoing support.
2002
“We’re wired! Now what?” A holistic approach to technology planning in high schools. Journal of Literacy and Technology, 2(2) Abstract: “We’re wired! Now what?” is a question I heard frequently from K-12 school teachers during my tenure as a media and technology consultant in New York City during the late 1990s. Most, if not all, of the school funding for technology at that time was spent on wiring classrooms or acquiring computers. Little of the funding was directed at planning or professional development for teachers.Clearly, a new framework for technology must emerge before technologies such as (but not limited to) computers can be used as anything other than attractive additions to otherwise dull curricula. My work with ten New York City high school principals and review of numerous technology plans generated some key elements for principals and administrators to consider when creating a school-wide technology plan. The elements comprise a holistic view of technology planning and serve as a map to more specific and therefore meaningful uses of technology across the curriculum. Following an outline of technology planning, I offer a case study of school-wide technology planning that raises interesting challenges for principals, teachers, district leaders, technology coordinators, and professional developers as they try to connect with technology for purpose larger than the equipment itself.