Remix This Project
How to plan and implement a media literacy Community of Practice in your school, district, or community.
How to plan and implement a media literacy Community of Practice in your school, district, or community.
This project was conceived and designed to create a model that could be replicated in other schools and communities.
This project began with several assumptions that guided its design.
Media literacy and digital citizenship can be confusing and dynamic given rapid changes in technology and how people are using and behaving using these technologies,
Many educators need support to understand these topics in order to teach them effectively to students,
Leadership by teacher librarians, instructional coaches, or other educators can address these challenges through professional development and collaboration, and
Communities of Practice offer a simple and effective structure to organize, support, and sustain media literacy and digital citizenship instruction in schools and districts.
If you want to strengthen your media literacy and digital citizenship instruction, this toolkit will help you get started.
It takes a village (or communities) to teach media literacy.
Beginning with the belief that educators working with other educators yields authentic, engaging, and responsive professional learning, this project relied on Communities of Practice as an essential organizational structure to effectively implement media literacy instruction. Communities of Practice not only support those who will lead as facilitators, but also serve as essential support structures within individual schools to support participating teachers seeking to integrate media literacy instruction in their classrooms.
While media literacy can be taught by any educator on their own, this type of hit and miss approach is hard to sustain and measure in terms of impact. Additionally, sharing resources, strategies, and lessons learned creates new capacity, interest, and understanding within a learning community. As such, this approach was built on creating sustainable educator communities which included multiple facilitators who led and supported groups of teachers in multiple schools or sites. The goal was to create sufficient expertise and energy to sustain media literacy instruction beyond a single event or lesson.
The best professional learning and teaching are collaborative.
Learning and implementing new content and instructional strategies can be 'trained.' But consistent research shows that when educators have choice, agency, and voice in their professional learning AND engage in authentic discussions about instruction (ex. Professional Learning Communities), the impacts on student learning are far greater.
Because media literacy is not only complex, but also does not currently exist as a defined content area (like mathematics), the integration of these skills and strategies must often be designed by educators themselves. While this may change over time, teaching and integrating media literacy remains a DIY enterprise, requiring educators to make sense, find connections, and craft instruction for student learning.
While all students need media literacy and digital citizenship instruction, starting small in order to build interest and expertise is a logical first step toward that greater goal. As you think about building your media literacy capacity, you should begin by defining where you want to begin.
Lesson learned
Though this project was originally conceived with a wild-eyed vision for the entire State of Washington, we strategically narrowed it down to SW Washington and five interested school districts, or more specifically, five interested teacher librarians. This was absolutely the best decision we made. We aimed for a Goldilocks happy medium, going bigger than just one district or school, but not stretching ourselves too thin. As a result, we developed a more expert cohort of media literacy facilitators and multiple communities of interested educators.
In your district or community, begin by looking for the 'low-hanging fruit' where there is already interest, expertise, or energy to support media literacy instruction. For your implementation, consider school or district priorities, areas of need, or strategic goals.
Lesson learned
For the SW WA project, we focused on secondary schools where OSPI research showed limited media literacy instruction (vs. at the elementary level.) We also followed the OSPI's guidance, based on the supporting legislation, to focus on ELA, social studies, and health classrooms.
There are no wrong answers as you define who will be part of your first cohort. But don't forget that you will need to identify multiple facilitators and multiple schools if you will be following this strategy.
While it might seem intuitive to choose teachers teaching the same grade level or content area, we found that diversity among our participants and content areas may have contributed to stronger and more engaged dynamics in our communities of practice. Because media literacy is the reason that educators are coming together, it matters less what and where educators teach. And to our pleasant surprise, these communities can create new partnerships and collaborations that might not usually occur.
Lesson learned
For the SW WA project, we identified five facilitators, five schools, and 3-5 participating teachers from each school . Each school cohort had educators representing different content areas, and in some cases, different levels (MS and HS).
This project was intentionally educator-driven which included the participation of both facilitators and participating teachers as part of Communities of Practice which supported professional learning and collaboration in support of media literacy instruction. Rather than a top-down "YOU'RE GOING TO DO THIS" initiative, this model aimed to be an authentic "let's do this!" approach to professional learning, educational leadership, and media literacy instruction.
Here's a quick overview of the players in your project.
Project lead or lead facilitator. While this toolkit provides resources, recommendations, and a road map to get you started, having one or more educators to serve as leader are important to get the process started. This lead could be one of your facilitators or could be an educator who simply oversees the overall effort.
Having a project lead is important. This lead can help form the facilitator cohort, schedule meetings, create agendas, and ensure outcome targets are defined and met. While some of these tasks can be shared among facilitators, having a 'facilitator of facilitators' ensured that our work proceeded and needs were met. A project lead can also serve as a liaison with school and district leaders. And they can also be an ombudsman to address challenges, questions, and needs that emerge in the course of the project.
Lesson learned
For the SW WA project, two project leads were initially identified to lead and support the facilitators. But due to staffing changes, a single lead took over midway through the grant and effectively managed the project through its completion. This lead was not connected to a school and did not support any participating teachers. Instead, they supported the project and the facilitators.
Facilitators serve as school-based leaders to work alongside their colleagues to support media literacy instruction in the classroom. The role of the facilitator is to lead and support classroom teachers seeking to integrate or teach media literacy in their classrooms. While the facilitator may also teach media literacy in their existing instructional role (ex. in the library or in technology classes), the goal of this model is to build the capacity and confidence of other educators in their integration of media literacy instruction.
Lesson learned
In the SW WA project, five facilitators from five different districts worked with a project lead to collaboratively build skills and understanding in order to effectively lead school-based Communities of Practice comprised of participating teachers. Again, due to staffing changes, one of the five facilitators did not finish the grant. However, four facilitators sustained the work over two years.
Recognizing that media literacy and digital citizenship are broad topics and evolving quickly in our digital culture, the facilitator should have some understanding with these topics, but does not necessarily have to be 'expert,' particularly considering that most adults (and educators) struggle to understand these issues themselves.
Lesson learned
In the SW WA project, the facilitators recognized that while they were similarly interested and passionate about media literacy, everyone brought different skills, knowledge, and interests which were explored and expanded through their community of practice.
Participating teachers work with their facilitator and colleagues with the goal of integrating media literacy and/or digital citizenship instruction into their classroom instruction. In the SW WA project, each facilitator worked with teachers from their own school. This strategy is probably the strongest approach because the facilitator and participating teachers already know one another, have trust and rapport, and share similar proximity and scheduling for meetings and collaboration. However, facilitators could effectively work with participating teachers from multiple schools.
The role of the participating teacher is as an educator who is interested and willing to integrate media literacy into their content or classroom instruction in new or different ways. While it's helpful to have participating teachers with some knowledge of media literacy, the facilitator and the local Community of Practice are in place to provide support, resources, and collaborative learning and sense making about media literacy and how to integrate it into their instruction.
Lesson learned
In the SW WA project, the relationships and credibility of the facilitator were important in identifying participating teachers. While district-based facilitators could have formed these teams, having school-based facilitators and classroom educators who shared the same site promoted cohesion and engagement.
Communities of Practice serve both as a structure and support for facilitators and participating teachers to identify resources, discuss instructional practices, and integrate media literacy into classroom learning. In the SW WA project, the first Community of Practice was formed to organize and support the facilitators in getting them ready to launch their own teams. After working and learning together as a group, the facilitators then identified participating teachers for school-based Communities of Practice to support the actual integration of media literacy into classroom instruction.
Lesson learned
In the SW WA project, there was an intentional examination and modeling of the concept of the Community of Practice with facilitators so that they could use this model in working with their participating teachers. Our theory of practice is that these Communities of Practice can help strengthen and sustain ongoing media literacy instruction beyond singular lessons or isolated units.
Because this model is based on leveraging existing expertise to provide leadership and facilitation to support media literacy instruction, you need to first identify who in your school, district, or community already has the willingness to serve as facilitators with the interest, expertise, and experience teaching media literacy and digital citizenship to students.
Teacher librarians are logical facilitators for this strategy as they often have knowledge and experience teaching media literacy as part of their instruction. They are also likely to have relationships and rapport with classroom teachers.
Instructional coaches or TOSAs (teachers on special assignment) are also great choices to serve as facilitators, particularly those who support digital learning.
Interested classroom teachers can also serve as facilitators, although teacher librarians, instructional coaches, and TOSAs likely have more flexibility and capacity in their schedules than classroom teachers.
Lesson learned
In the SW WA project, we identified teacher librarians as logical leaders to serve as facilitators in their buildings. Thanks to their leadership roles in their schools and flexibility to plan and work with classroom teachers, they helped ensure the success of our pilot project.
As you seek to form a cohort of facilitators and participating teachers, you can certainly mix and match educators from these or other job roles. While the SW WA project only included teacher librarians as facilitators, other educators could have easily and effectively worked alongside the teacher librarians. Likewise, participating teachers can also be heterogenous in content area and/or grade levels, depending on interest or the the priorities of the school or district.
While facilitators ideally bring some expertise in media literacy and digital citizenship instruction, it is wise to plan for some professional learning and support to ensure their success.
Lesson learned
For the SW WA project, the first phase focused on building the skills, dispositions, and knowledge of the facilitators to lead their school-based media literacy communities of practice.
Organize your facilitator community of practice. Once you have identified your facilitators, seek to connect them through in-person or virtual meetings. Creating schedules and timelines can either be created by the lead or collectively among the facilitators.
Assess media literacy and digital citizenship knowledge among facilitators. This can be formal or informal. The goal of this step is less to evaluate/assess the facilitators and more to identify areas for training, reading, research, or other professional learning. From this, the project lead (or facilitators) can research and identify useful professional learning resources to explore within the facilitator community of practice.
Lesson learned
For the SW WA project, the first few meetings of the facilitators were focused on informally identifying what everyone knew (or thought they knew) about media literacy.
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