Evaluating media literacy and media education competences of future media educators
(2014) Media Education Futures — Location: Tampere, Finland (8.May.2014)
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- Authors
Tilleul, Camille 
- Abstract
- Empirically-validated assessment tools for media literacy are still rare, and so are empirical evaluations of media literacy competences (Hobbs & Frost 2003, Quin & McMahon 1993, Arke & Primack 2009). In this paper, we present an empirical evaluation of the media literacy and media education competences of future media educators. The evaluation is part of the scientific tutoring of a new master’s degree in Media Literacy Education opened in September 2013 in a French-speaking Belgian college. Our presentation will focus on the transversal test we designed to assess the students’ overall development of media literacy and media education competences over the course of their two-year master’s program. This test was developed as a longitudinal assessment tool, independent from other forms of evaluation that are part of the master’s program courses and seminars. It is meant be used three times during the first cohort of students’ two-year curriculum: once at the beginning of their first year, once at the end of their first year, and once at the end of their second year. The transversal test consists in a two-hour individual, semi-structured interview in two parts. The first part focuses on media education competences. In this part, students are asked to create a pedagogical intervention in the field of media education targeted at a class of 14-year-olds, based on a fictitious situation. The intervention plan must include an appropriate diagnosis of the problems to be addressed, a set of objectives and an adequate pedagogical method. Students are also asked to detail the technical, financial and logistical implications of their intervention. The second part of the transversal test focuses on media literacy competences, and relies on the conceptual framework we developed (Fastrez 2010; Fastrez & De Smedt 2012), which defines media literacy as the set of competences required to read, write, navigate and organize media as informational, technical and social objects. Accordingly, students are asked to complete four tasks: selecting appropriate resources for their pedagogical intervention from a database (navigating), reading, comparing and evaluating two media documents from the database (reading), organizing the database for its subsequent use by a colleague (organizing) and creating a media that addresses another media education issue (writing). In each task, we evaluate the students' ability to consider the media under their informational (referent, representations and languages), technical (functions, performance, interfaces, etc.) and social (effects, intentions, context of production, etc.) dimensions.The first data collection phase based on the test was conducted in September-October 2013, on the 13 first-year students enrolled in the master’s program. Preliminary results showed moderate levels of media education and media literacy competences in the students, with no significant difference between students who have a bachelor’s degree in information and communication and those who have a bachelor’s degree in education and pedagogy. The technical and social dimensions of media seem to be the matters that students struggle the most with. As this paper focuses on a project under development, we will present the methodology of the test, and the detailed results of the first data collection phase.
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Citations
Tilleul, C., Fastrez, P., & De Smedt, T. (2014). Evaluating media literacy and media education competences of future media educators. Media Education Futures, Tampere, Finland. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/26013