ABSTRACT

This chapter outlines analytical frameworks of critical media literacy teachers can use as a method of integrating critical pedagogy in their classrooms. It discusses the challenges that are likely to face teachers in the wake of a new millennium. Kincheloe and Steinberg remind us that teacher knowledge is created when teachers and students confront a contradiction, when students encounter a dangerous memory, when teacher-presented information collides with student experience, or when student-presented information collides with teacher experience. The author encourages students to examine more thoroughly the role that beliefs and values play in our "knowing" and "doing" as teachers, particularly those beliefs, actions, and values shaped by our media culture. Critical media literacy moves questions beyond the routine of testing, controlling, and determining students' acquisition of predetermined, preconstructed knowledge. A key concept of critical media literacy encourages students to challenge or create oppositional meaning to mainstream or dominant knowledge.