Preservice teachers’ intention to teach media & information literacy in their future classroom: An application of theory of planned behavior.
Sarah Gretter Dissertation
Today’s students are exposed to unfiltered media messages on a daily basis. International organizations such as UNESCO, and educational reforms within the United States like the Next Generation Science Standards, are increasingly placing emphasis on enhancing students’ critical thinking abilities by making evaluative judgments of mediatized information. As a consequence, educators need to embed Media & Information Literacy (MIL) skills in their classrooms to teach students how to assess the factual and social pertinence of digital information in their everyday lives. Yet, there are no existing policies or regulations to ensure basic MIL education in U.S. teacher education programs (Tiede et al., 2015).
Sarah’s dissertation asked: How can we support the implementation of MIL in K-12 education by understanding what factors play a role in preservice teachers’ intention to teach MIL in their classroom? One way to address this issue is through the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), a framework that explains individuals’ intention to perform a specific behavior based on three factors: attitudes (i.e., whether the person is in favor of doing it), subjective norms (i.e., how much social pressure the person feels to do it), and perceived behavioral control (i.e., whether the person feels in control of the behavior in question) (Ajzen, 1991). As such, he dissertation was a multi-phase study looking at preservice teachers’ intention to teach Media & Information Literacy in their future classroom. Each of the three studies answered a specific question: 1) What do preservice teachers think about teaching MIL? 2) What predicts preservice teachers’ intention to teach MIL? and 3) How can we support preservice teachers’ intention to teach MIL?
The first paper in her dissertation reported on an elicitation study conducted with focus groups of preservice teachers to understand the factors that would either impede or facilitate the teaching of MIL in their future classroom. The elicited list of factors provided the basis for designing a TPB survey. The second paper described the design, validation, and results of a survey based on these factors. The results showed that preservice teachers had a high intention to teach MIL in their future classroom, as were their attitudes–a significant predictor of their intention to teach MIL–towards MIL. However, the results also showed that their subjective norms and perceived behavioral control were lower. These results thus provided a basis to design an MIL module that would help support their positive intention. The third paper reported on this online module through reflective exercises designed around the results gathered in the aforementioned survey, and results showed that the majority of participants found a positive effect of the module on their intention to teach MIL in their future classroom.
Sarah’s dissertation has important implications for educational research, practice, and policy. She is continuing her work on MIL in her current position as senior learning designer at Michigan State University Hub for Innovation in Learning and Technology. For more information or to contact her, follow her Twitter handle @SarahGretter, or visit her website.
Michigan State University College of Education Ph.D. Hooding Ceremony (From left: Richard Prawat, Dr! Sarah Gretter, Aman – Proud Advisor)
References
Ajzen, I. (1991). Theory of planned behavior. Organizational behavior and human decision processes, 50, 179-211.
Tiede, J., Grafe, S., & Hobbs, R. (2015). Pedagogical Media Competencies of Preservice Teachers in Germany and the United States: A Comparative Analysis of Theory and Practice. Peabody Journal of Education, 90(4), 533-545.
