UCLA

The COVID-19 pandemic caused many educational stakeholders to rethink the purpose and function of public education. The COVID-19 mediasphere and politically divided climate has ushered legislative stakeholders and the public’s attention to the need for media literacy education. Critical media literacy addresses the goals of media literacy education but also offers an explicit focus on addressing the relationships between audiences and media, information, and power. Because critical media literacy emphasizes challenging how power maps onto information and reproduces injustice, it requires an embodied stance that dissents against hierarchical forms of education and hegemonic systems, structures, and ideologies. Critical media literacy necessitates an embodied critical engagement (ways of being) with the world and critical pedagogical practices (ways of doing) at the classroom-level (Vasquez et al., 2019, p. 300). While there has been growing interest in the field of critical media literacy in the United States during the pandemic, more research is needed with practitioners to understand what shapes their critical embodiments and practices of critical media literacy.

This critical qualitative collective case study examined four secondary teachers’ embodiments and practices of critical media literacy during the COVID-19 pandemic in California. Two questions informed this study: 1) How do teachers describe their embodiments (ways of being) in relation to critical media literacy?, and 2) How do teachers’ practice (ways of doing) critical media literacy in their classrooms?. Building from Kellner and Share’s (2019) multiperspectival approach, this research was guided by several critical social theories, including: cultural studies, democratic inquiry-based pedagogy, critical pedagogy, and intersectionality. Data collection included: qualitative semi-structured interviews and artifacts (e.g., teachers’ lesson plans, student work samples, etc.). Data was analyzed through two rounds of coding: in vivo and axial. Findings indicated that teachers’ embodiments of critical media literacy were influenced by their journeys to criticality and rooted in transformative worldviews. Teachers' practices of critical media literacy relied on co-constructing safe and critical communities and scaffolding critical media analysis and production. This research study establishes a starting point for subsequent critical media literacy education research, theory, practice, and policy by providing examples of teachers’ embodied perspectives and practices.