Measuring Media Literacy for Media Education: Development of a Questionnaire for Teachers' Competencies

Abstract

Effective media education requires that teachers have sufficient media literacy competencies as well as the competencies to promote media literacy in students. This article describes the development of a questionnaire to measure these competencies individually or as a team. The questionnaire was developed in five stages. A systematic and critical listing of existing inventories resulted in a preliminary questionnaire. In the final stage, the questionnaire was submitted to a representative sample of 454 teachers and 219 student teachers, and an exploratory factor analysis was conducted. The results show that the questionnaire is sufficiently valid and reliable.

Digital and media literacy in pre-service teachereducation

“…ICT "functionings" do not automatically correspond to actual uses of digital literacy for positive change (McDougall, Readman and Wilkinson, 2018). Of course, teachers should be media literate (Simons, Meeus & T'Sas, 2017), but that does not seem to be enough: today's prospective teachers already live in a mediated and digitized world, but a gap between personal competences and professional practice is still observable (Røkenes & Krumsvik, 2014). The TPACK model (Mishra & Koehler, 2006) provides a framework for the integration of technical, content and pedagogical knowledge, suggesting the idea that teachers need specific competences in order to transfer their DML into DML education for their pupils.…”

Untitled

“…Question #2: How much importance do pre-service teachers place on the different skills needed to be fluent in media literacy? Though media literacy can be a complex term to define, the goal for this survey extends the work of Simons, Meeus, and T'Sas (2017) to query participants about skills related to media literacy. Specifically, we were interested in how confident the participants were at the time of this survey in their own media literacy skills and their ability to teach those skills to their future students.…”

“…The third data collected was a multi-item survey that replicated the one used by Simons, Meeus, and T'Sas (2017). In their work, they explained that "if teachers are to provide their learners with effective media education they should: a) be sufficiently media literate themselves, and b) have the required competencies to promote media literacy among learners" (p. 110).…”

“…In their work, they explained that "if teachers are to provide their learners with effective media education they should: a) be sufficiently media literate themselves, and b) have the required competencies to promote media literacy among learners" (p. 110). Though they were not the first researchers to attempt to develop an instrument to gauge the abilities of PSTs and teachers as related to media literacy (Arke & Primack, 2009;Hargittaai, 2009;Hobbs & Frost, 2003) Simons, Meeus & T'Sas (2017 were purposeful in aligning their survey to previously conducted research related to media literacy and validated it with both teachers and PSTs.…”

A Study on the Perceived Media Literacy Level of Preparatory Year Students in a University Setting

“…Given this critical role of media, it is quite important to raise awareness in academic settings, as well. Media literacy empowers people to actively participate in society, and despite families' obvious role in this matter, media are not confined within the walls of the parental home; hence, educational institutions have an important responsibility to prepare learners to use media in a suitable manner (Simons, Meeus, & T'Sas, 2017).…”