Critical Action: A Framework for Curricular CML Integration
Biographical Sketch
Veteran high school teacher and researcher Ben Boyington, M.Ed., founded his high-school media studies work on the idea that skepticism and activism are essential to citizenship. He believes that depth of understanding comes from integration, design, and teaching others, and that heutagogy is more important than pedagogy. His research into the 1:1 screen initiative is published in Media Education for a Digital Generation (Routledge, 2016). Boyington is also vice president of the Action Coalition for Media Education and coordinator of the Global Critical Media Literacy Project.
Type of Presentation
Individual presentation
Brief Description of Presentation
In "Critical Action: A Framework for Curricular CML Integration," Ben Boyington will share his frame for integrating critical media literacy into existing programming in and across disciplines. He will highlight CML alignment with Common Core and other state standards and CML's role in project-based learning and competency-based education. He will consider CMLE as heutagogy and as a path to, and foundation of, civic engagement in the political climate of the early 21st century.
Abstract of Proposal
Curricular approaches in the United States must be reconceptualized. We put too much emphasis on testing and surface knowledge, despite stated emphasis on the higher levels of Bloom's Taxonomy and so-called 21st-century skills. A curricular model integrating critical media literacy would truly address both of these theories/models of education and would incorporate competency-based education and project-based learning. It would also lead other thinkers to reexamine the role of formal curriculum in our schools.
In this session, Ben Boyington will share the concepts that drive his Critical Action Framework, a model for integrating critical media literacy in a public school context: "responsive” curriculum, CML as a tool for fomenting change and addressing real-life problems, and the embedding of CML in the curriculum through aligned explorations of literature and history, grounding in the sciences, and service-learning projects. Boyington proposes that CML is a powerful avenue to “critical action": the understandings provide students with the knowledge to question our institutions' power in our lives, heutagogy and student agency, and the media tools to build campaigns for activism on topics that matter to students.
Start Date
2-24-2018 8:10 AM
End Date
2-24-2018 9:40 AM
Recommended Citation
Boyington, Ben, "Critical Action: A Framework for Curricular CML Integration" (2018). International Critical Media Literacy Conference. 6.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/criticalmedialiteracy/2018/2018/6
Critical Action: A Framework for Curricular CML Integration
Curricular approaches in the United States must be reconceptualized. We put too much emphasis on testing and surface knowledge, despite stated emphasis on the higher levels of Bloom's Taxonomy and so-called 21st-century skills. A curricular model integrating critical media literacy would truly address both of these theories/models of education and would incorporate competency-based education and project-based learning. It would also lead other thinkers to reexamine the role of formal curriculum in our schools.
In this session, Ben Boyington will share the concepts that drive his Critical Action Framework, a model for integrating critical media literacy in a public school context: "responsive” curriculum, CML as a tool for fomenting change and addressing real-life problems, and the embedding of CML in the curriculum through aligned explorations of literature and history, grounding in the sciences, and service-learning projects. Boyington proposes that CML is a powerful avenue to “critical action": the understandings provide students with the knowledge to question our institutions' power in our lives, heutagogy and student agency, and the media tools to build campaigns for activism on topics that matter to students.
