Master of Science / Curriculum and Instruction / Thomas Vontz / Discourse analysis (DA) explores the relationships between discursive practices and wider social and cultural structures, relations, and processes. In this paper I explore, through a qualitative DA of education reporting in the Topeka Capital Journal (January 2014- January 2016), state press releases, and gubernatorial state speeches, how notions of fiscal crisis, both material and narratively cultivated, function to underscore the logic of neoliberalism. While considering potential context specific properties of local reporting and the cultural, geographical, and historical context of the region, I connect my findings with the larger, scholarly body of work pertaining to these issues. Connecting media language and policy discourse across local and global dimensions adds to a growing theoretical and qualitative understanding of the facets of education restructuring and reform within the framework of the global movement and adds material resources in the form of analysis as tools for educational practitioners and grassroots organizations working to craft alternatives to the neoliberal doctrine.

This body of work endeavours to interrogate mainstream media and popular culture [mis]representations of racialized persons, in addition to the negative impact such imageries have on identity formation processes - principally amongst populations of young men and women of African descent. While this work focuses on North American contexts, this examination is applicable to all peoples in the African Diaspora. I intend to uncover the learning possibilities for racialized youth, by introducing an educational model that prepares students to critique various forms of media, as well as teaching and encouraging them to create their own realities through the use of a critical form of media education in multiple level classrooms, starting with those in the Toronto District School Board. The ultimate goal of this project is to propel racialized students to move away from the [mis]educative effects of the media, toward beginning to define themselves on their own terms.

The purpose of this action research study was to improve the education of Indigenous students enrolled at an inner-city urban alternative high school for adolescent mothers and/or mothers-to-be. Seven adult students agreed to participate in this study, as did the English Language Arts teacher who facilitated the critical literacy classroom activities. The study investigated the impact that critical mathematics and critical literacy activities had on developing students’ critical consciousness (Freire, 2000), which is a key component of transformative learning (Mezirow, 1997). The findings indicate that the cumulative effect of the critical curricular activities enacted during this study led to critical consciousness development in students, and thereby contributed to a more transformative learning experience for them. The findings also indicate that action research was integral to changing the mathematics and English Language Arts classroom practices in this study. / February 2017

Grounded in the a Pedagogy of Multiliteracies (New London Group, 1996), this dissertation reports on the implementation of a fourth semester French curriculum informed by Cope and Kalantzis's (2000, 2009, 2015) framework of learning by design, with a focus on visual and critical media literacy development to enable intermediate French students to consider multimodal texts from the perspective of consumers as well as producers and to understand the meaning potential that exists between and within the semiotic resources afforded in media production (Nelson and Kern, 2012). Drawing upon "the value of postmethod [and] postlinguistic teaching… which are not looking at language learning in the traditional sense… [but] rather at learners’ acquisition of… the ability to reflect on textualization and contextualization, considering language as one important dimension of semiosis among others" (Nelson and Kern, 2012, p. 61), this dissertation project examined how the frameworks of visual and critical media literacy within the process of design enhanced students' voice and agency in the foreign language classroom. The first inquiry aims to explore if and how a curriculum centered around visual and critical media literacies creates the conditions to 1) foster students' awareness of media ethics in the consumption and production of everyday media, and 2) engage students in a process of reflection upon the meanings created by semiotics resources used in mediated-texts, and their impact on shaping their vision of the world. Findings demonstrated that the implementation of visual and critical media literacy frameworks gave students the opportunity to reflect on their use of media and the ethical implications, and to foster students' greater understanding and interest in self-reflection and considerations of others. The second inquiry aims to demonstrate, through the production of digital storytelling, how instructors might address diversity in foreign language classrooms by 1) allowing students to connect universal themes (e.g. technology, friendship, immigration) with their personal stories, and 2) by giving them the opportunities to display their uniqueness by using their own voices and positioning themselves as participative agents for social change. Findings demonstrated that digital storytelling fosters classroom diversity by allowing the exploration of individual differences and enhancing the understanding of the distinctiveness of every individual. The third inquiry, a case study explores how Digital StoryTelling (DST) 1) contributes to students' understanding of the way semiotic resource choice and orchestration construct layers of meaning and satisfy the purposes of the message conveyed to the audience, and 2) supports students' agency through the process of design. Findings showed the potential of using multimodality projects as they allow students' emerging literacies to take center stage in the foreign language classroom and increase students’ agency and ‘semiotic agility’ (Prior, 2010; Thorne, 2013).

What is the most effective curricular and pedagogical approach to use in increasing media literacy among students? This is the challenge that I and most media educators must address today. This thesis charts my exploration of that question and demonstrates the results of a unit of instruction created to enhance the critical media literacy of students by focusing on positioning theory, spectatorship, and considering teen representation in mass media films. In creating curriculum, I needed to define the end goal of the instruction. My research led me to critical media literacy and its focus on moving beyond media textual analysis to exploring the power systems and meaning-making of media texts that could increase understanding of the world and oneself. In this research, the critical media literacy objectives were addressed through a focus on teen representations in film. Students viewed and responded to teen representations in a variety of films, and then were placed in the role of media creators to create teen films that showed the teen experience from their own perspectives. This shift, from media consumer to creator, was designed to help students understand the role and power of media authorship, allowing them to consider how media messages could be constructed and transmitted. Positioning theory suggests that individuals take certain roles and enact certain storylines in their social interactions with others. In order to achieve my critical media literacy goals, I needed to encourage the students to break from the positioning patterns of a traditional classroom, wherein the instructor holds the knowledge and is the arbiter of media values to the students. This shift was promoted in an effort for the students to gain more autonomy in media production and to develop media reading skills based on their own perspectives and not simply by looking at a text through the instructor's eyes. The research presented here shows the success and limitations faced in a secondary film class with a shift in curriculum, based on critical media literacy, and pedagogy, based on positioning theory, and allows me as an educator to uncover new ideas that can help me and other media educators meet the changing needs of the subject and students today.

This research synthesis investigates the effects that popular culture and new forms of mediation have had on the teaching and learning of English. Further, it examines some key aspects worth consideration when applying these types of texts in an educational context. The English syllabus for upper secondary school advises teachers to make use of the outside world for resources, and teach the students how to access, gather, analyze and use information found in different types of texts. After initial struggles, due to teachers’ reluctance, popular culture and modern media has found its way in to most classrooms and studies have shown different effects that the introduction of these texts have had on teaching and learning of English. Firstly, there has been a shift in how many teachers approach texts by letting students take more responsibility by participating in the selection process of different texts. Moreover, some studies have shown the effects popular culture and digital media have had on the acquisition of literacy skills. Study results suggest that primarily, students critical skills have developed, and that “out of school literacies” have helped students develop more traditional literacy skills such as reading and writing. However, this research synthesis concludes by saying that more research measuring the acquisition of traditional English using popular culture and digital media skills over longer periods of time involving more students would allow one to answer more accurately what effects they have had.

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Critical media literacy (Kellner & Share, 2005) may better equip children to interpret videogame content and to create games that are nonviolent and socially just. Videogames are growing in popularity in classrooms. Yet educators and parents have concerns about the violent and stereotypical content they include. An earlier study based on the curriculum Beyond Blame: Challenging Violence in the Media (Webb, Martin, Afifi, & Kraus, 2009) examined the value of a media awareness curriculum. In this mixed-method study, I explored the effectiveness of a critical media literacy program that incorporated collaboratively creating nonviolent or sociallyjust games in teaching fourth-grade students the factors of awareness of violence, marketing, and critical media literacy. Qualitative data collected from teacher reflection notes, student journals, Scratch projects, and interviews revealed the positive effects of the program. Quantitative data supported these conclusions. This highlights the need for schools to engage students in computer programming as a means to learn academics, while educating students in critical media literacy to better enable them to navigate wisely the media saturated world in which they live. In learning programming, students engage in collaborative work, their interactions helping them to collectively create meaning for the symbols they create. Set in a framework of critical media literacy and symbolic interactionism (Blumer, 1969; Mead, 1934), this study provides an innovative model for teaching computer programming and critical media literacy skills to students.

Syftet med denna studie är att utifrån ett bildningsideal liksom didaktiska och ämnesdidaktiska perspektiv utveckla förståelse för medielärares förhållningssätt till utmaningar som uppstår i undervisningen utifrån mediaämnenas sammansatta karaktär. Detta besvarades utifrån tre frågeställningar. 1. Hur beskriver medielärare sin undervisning och didaktik? 2. Hur beskriver medielärare sin undervisning relaterat till medieämnenas sammansättning av olika perspektiv? 3. Hur kan medielärares beskrivningar förstås utifrån ett bildningsideal?Studien har en teoretisk ansats utifrån begreppen didaktik och bildning. Lärarnas beskrivningar utgår från semistrukturerade intervjuer som har analyserats tematiskt. Det som framkommer i studien är att medielärare har en tydlig praktisk didaktik och att ämnesinnehållet ofta kretsar kring kommunikation på olika sätt. De olika perspektiven som ingår i medieämnena, samhälleliga, estetiska, språkliga, etiska och tekniska, har lite olika tyngd och det framgår särskilt om lärarna återfinns på det estetiska- eller på det samhällsvetenskapliga programmet. Medielärarna skulle kunna utveckla sin undervisning och bli mer medvetna på olika sätt utifrån dessa perspektiv. Framför allt skulle en större medvetenhet kring de etiska och språkliga perspektiven vara önskvärt. Studien kommer fram till att det är förtjänstfullt att förstå medielärare utifrån ett bildningsideal. Bildningsbegreppet skulle kunna bidra till att ge medielärare ett holistiskt perspektiv i sin analys av den didaktiska praktiken och ge en bra balans i medielärares undervisning utifrån medieämnenas mångfald av aspekter. Att analysera medieämnena utifrån bildningsbegreppet skulle även kunna bidra till att förtydliga och konkretisera de aspekter som förespråkare för Critical Media Literacy anser vara viktiga för mediedidaktik. / The purpose of this study is, based on an educational, bildung, ideal as well as didactic and subject-didactic perspectives, to develop an understanding of media teachers' approaches to challenges that arise in teaching based on the composite nature of media subjects. This was addressed through three research questions: 1. How do media teachers describe their teaching and didactics? 2. How do media teachers describe their teaching in relation to the nature of media subjects’ different perspectives? 3. How can media teachers' descriptions be understood from an educational, bildung ideal perspective? The study has a theoretical approach based on the concepts of didactics and education. The teachers' descriptions are based on semi-structured interviews that have been thematically analysed. The findings of the study indicate that media teachers have a clear practical understanding of their didactics, and the subject matter often revolves around communication in various ways. The different perspectives included in media subjects, societal, aesthetic, linguistic, ethical, and technical, have varying degrees of importance, particularly depending on whether the teachers are found in the aesthetic or social science program. Media teachers could enhance their teaching and become more aware in various ways based on these perspectives. Specifically, a greater awareness of ethical and linguistic perspectives would be desirable. The study concludes that it is rewarding to understand media teachers from an educational, bildung ideal perspective. The concept of education, bildung could help provide media teachers with a holistic perspective in their analysis of didactic practice and achieve a good balance in media teachers' teaching based on the diversity of aspects within media subjects. Analysing media subjects from an educational, bildung perspective could also help to clarify and concretize the aspects that proponents of Critical Media Literacy consider important for media didactics.

本研究以回答「何謂好圖畫書」為主軸，透過兩階段進行探究：一為透過訪談方式，了解圖畫書文化迴路中發行者、創作者、消費者與經營者角色對「何謂好圖畫書」的見解，以及對現在台灣圖畫書市場的看法與建議，二為研究者實際進入幼兒園，以階段一的發現以及相關文獻資料的搜集，選定一本現在圖畫書較少見的題材與幼兒一同閱讀，進而探討台灣圖畫書市場有何可能的發展空間。最後，本研究共提出四個研究主張： 一、 批判媒體識讀的必要性 圖畫書的意義透過生產、消費、規制、再現與認同五個狀態彼此滲透循環而成，因此我們不應單純將圖畫書視為文字與圖畫的集合體，而是必須抱持批判的角度閱讀文本，找尋可能隱藏在文本中的真實。 二、 圖畫書多元主題的必要性 圖畫書受到商業利益考量、家長對孩子的教育觀等環境因素影響，具有「殘缺文本」的存在，即某些主題的圖畫書在市場中較為少見與處於弱勢，然而為刺激幼兒的批判閱讀能力，我們有必要提供豐富多元的文本給幼兒。 三、 不過度依賴書單的單一訊息 書單提供消費者消費的便利性，然而消費者也因此對書單過度依賴，所以閱聽人使用書單時應注意使用方式，否則容易喪失培養自我閱讀品味的機會。 四、 反對崇尚智識取向的圖畫書 台灣家長選書時，常受到「能否帶給孩子知識」的智識取向影響，然而這樣的思維容易讓孩子錯失閱讀多樣文本的機會，由於閱聽人可透過閱讀與批判的過程為文本賦予新意，因此圖畫書無好壞之分，端看讀者如何使用它。 / The purpose of this study is to answer ”What means good picture book?” and the concrete research concerns in this study include: (1) through in-depth interview with producer, author, consumer, and business operator in circuit of culture to understand how do they think about “good picture books ”, and their suggestion to Taiwan picture book industry, (2) choose one picture book which is rare in Taiwan picture books industry and study with children. There are four main findings from this study as follows: 1. The necessity developing critical thinking skills in media literacy Picture books are made through representation, regulation, consumption, production, and identity, so we can not only see picture books as a combination of words and pictures but try to find out the reality which hides in texts. 2. The necessity of providing multi-thesis picture books It exists “mutilated text” in picture book industry because of commercial profit and parents’ educational idea, but we have to provide children multi-thesis picture books to stimulate their critical thinking skills. 3. Do not rely on booklist too much We have to know that booklists make us choose picture books easier but may also make customers rely on it too much. 4. Do not advocate “knowledge-based” picture books If Taiwanese parents always choose “knowledge-based” picture books because they think those make children learn much more knowledge, children will loose their chance to meet multi-thesis picture books. In fact, texts do not really matter, but the key is how we read it with critical thinking skills in media literacy.