{"id":1388,"date":"2020-04-01T20:30:00","date_gmt":"2020-04-02T01:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ic4ml.org\/?post_type=journal-article&p=1388"},"modified":"2022-05-15T11:06:09","modified_gmt":"2022-05-15T16:06:09","slug":"briefing-project-look-sharps-decoding-media-constructions-and-substantiality","status":"publish","type":"journal-article","link":"https:\/\/ic4ml.org\/es\/journal-article\/briefing-project-look-sharps-decoding-media-constructions-and-substantiality\/","title":{"rendered":"Briefing: Project Look Sharp’s Decoding Media Constructions and Substantiality"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Abstract: <\/strong>This article explores how teachers can integrate the theory and practice of media literacy education into the teaching of sustainability content. It highlights two lessons, one for elementary students on bottled water choices and one for high school students on climate change and agriculture, detailing lesson construction and execution. The article explains how praxis, the intersection of reflection and action, can be brought to life in classroom settings using contemporary media documents as codes to deepen understanding and to initiate involvement for change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Keywords<\/strong>: media literacy, bottled water, climate change, agriculture, Paulo Freire, praxis, dialogue<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Download full article pdf >><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

In his coda to Greening Media Education<\/em>, Antonio L\u00f3pez summarizes the complex set of skills needed \u201cto bring ecologically oriented cultural practice into the realm of media education:  systems thinking, collaborative learning, critical thinking, lifelong learning and digital media literacy.\u201d (L\u00f3pez, 2014, p. 181). This article offers cases studies of two lessons, one for elementary age students and another for upper level high school students, each of which was designed with these skills in mind as a way to bring L\u00f3pez\u2019s vision into practice in the classroom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve been a teacher for four decades now and I\u2019ve found that my early grounding in the pedagogy of Brazilian educator Paulo Freire (1998; 2005) has informed my every vocational niche. Freire\u2019s brilliant insight was to help illiterate and intelligent peasant farmers learn to read the word by inviting them to read their world using critical questioning as the core of his practice. Freire describes his pedagogical process as one based on dialogue founded in a horizontal empathic relationship between equal partners. He characterizes this joint search for intercommunication as loving, humble, hopeful, trusting and critical. He contrasts dialogue with the \u201canti-dialogue\u201d common to top down communiqu\u00e9s which he describes as loveless, arrogant, hopeless, mistrustful and acritical.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Freire initiates dialogue using codifications or codes. These are representations, often graphic in nature, that can help students and teachers to engage in a collaborative process to reveal truths about their place in culture and in history. Freire sees codes as tools for praxis, the constant interplay between reflection and action in service to the need to transform society into the empathic and loving relationships he envisions. Freire stressed that education is a process of transformation of self and society and not merely an exercise in abstract thinking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At Project Look Sharp we use media constructions as the codes through which students learn to read their world by engaging in media document decoding. The decoding consists of questions to spark dialogue about the content of the media document (\u201cWhat is the message here about sustainability?\u201d) and about the media form itself (\u201cWho made this and for what purpose? What is the media maker\u2019s bias? How do my own biases inform my interpretation?\u201d).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As we integrate sustainability as the core content for media analysis we try to use a place-based focus for our work as modeled in our collection entitled Media Construction of Sustainability: Finger Lakes<\/em> (Sperry, 2012). Additionally, we create lessons that reflect the nuanced analyses necessary for systems thinking, a complexity that suggests integration of multiple subject areas into our teaching: science, social studies, English language arts and media literacy. These lessons reflect diversity in age-range (upper elementary and high school\/college) as well as media forms (TV commercials, educational videos, governmental and NGO reports, corporate blog posts, TV news reports, webcasts and documentary film). Since collaborative curriculum development is a priority in our efforts to develop a strong community of co-learners, both lessons discussed here, \u201c\u201cWhat About Bottled Water?<\/a>\u201d and \u201cClimate Change, Agriculture and Sustainability,\u201d were developed in collaboration with local educators. These two case study lessons are included in our Media Constructions of Sustainability collections, available free through Project Look Sharp\u2019s website (https:\/\/www.projectlooksharp.org\/<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Critical Thinking About Bottled Water<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The first lesson, \u201cWhat About Bottled Water?<\/a>,\u201d is part of the water unit in our collection, Media Constructions of Sustainability: Upper Elementary<\/a><\/em> (Sperry, 2015). It was developed in collaboration with Ithaca City School District teacher Brian Goodman. This lesson designed for fifth grade students has three primary objectives:<\/p>\n\n\n\n