Effect of media literacy on prospective social studies teachers’ multicultural attitudes

A central concern for teacher education programs is to prepare future teachers to practice democratic education. It could be asserted that democratic education is almost impossible without a multicultural attitude of the teacher. The purpose of this study was to identify prospective social studies teachers’ multicultural attitude and if taking a Media Literacy course has an effect on their multicultural attitude scores. In this Quasi-Experimental research study, participants were comprised of 102 third-year prospective Social Studies teachers. The experimental group (N=51) received Media Literacy training in which a wide range of issues and media representations were investigated from a multicultural point of view. The other group (N=51) were comprised of students taking the Development and Environment Issues Geography course in which no issues were investigated from a media or multicultural literacy point of view. It was made sure that both gropus were equal except for the treatment variable. A Multicultural Attitude Scale for Teachers has been administered to the participants in both groups before and after the treatment. Means scores were used to give a description of participants’ multicultural attitude. Obtained pretest and posttest scores were also compared by using Paired Samples t Test at 0.05 confidence level. Findings demonstrated that mean scores remained stable in the control group contrary to the falling scores in the experimental group. Although there are several ways to interpret this finding, most important of all is that participants who took the media literacy course might feel a need to approach multicultural issues with a greater care and attention.

Media literacy ,

multicultural attitudes ,

social studies ,

teacher education ,