Educational Standards and Media Literacy

Integrating Media Literacy Across the Curriculum
Media literacy is most successful when it is integrated across the curriculum and, thus, related to national, state or district educational standards and assessment rubrics.  CML's experience with Project SMARTArt demonstrated that, given training and practice through professional development, teachers can easily integrate curricula, devising lessons that incorporate CML's media literacy framework while meeting state education standards in at least three subjects in as little as 20 minutes. 

CML's framework for media literacy serves as an excellent integration tool and "metaframe" through which to provide a common critical thinking approach and vocabulary for teacher and students alike.  This metaframe applies to any and all content or subject areas or themes, and as students apply a process of inquiry, they can work across disciplines to solve problems.

Lesson plans that CML has developed for programs such as Beyond Blame: Challenging Violence in the Media or A Recipe for Action:  Deconstructing Food Advertising list national education standards for language arts, health, and technology; given the content, these standards could easily be extended to visual and performing arts, math, or social studies.

The Common Core State Standards Initiative, which released new national standards adopted by many states in 2010, have four strands named for the language arts:  Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening.  The State of Texas, which has not adopted these standards, also includes Viewing and Representing as two additional strands, and although all of the strands can be connected to media literacy, Viewing and Representing tends to imply the multi-media nature of media literacy and the deconstruction and construction skills called for in today's global media environment.

National Technology, Health, and School Library Standards lend themselves very easily to media literacy implementations, as well.