A teachable moment: opportunities, gaps and next steps from our review of Media literacy training for teachers
Much of the focus of children and young people’s online experiences is necessarily about how to keep them safe. But in a world where being online is increasingly indispensable for life and work, who is best placed to ensure children and young people have the knowledge and skills they need to live a purposeful online life?
Under the Online Safety Act Ofcom is required to increase people's media literacy. We identified teacher training as a key way we can do this in our three year media literacy strategy. By supporting teachers’ continuing professional development, we can ensure the skilled network of professionals around children and young people have the knowledge and tools they need to support their pupils’ media literacy. We want to identify where we can best enhance media literacy teacher training so we needed to better understand what is already on offer.
We conducted a mapping exercise to see where Ofcom’s media literacy outcomes are covered in training already and where there are gaps. To frame all of our work, we think about 5 media literacy outcomes: access and creation, protection, critical thinking, media savvy, and digital citizenship. The research focussed on continuing professional development for qualified teachers in England.
Following a scoping scan, 20 providers generously shared their training materials and 14 took part in interviews, so we could identify the coverage and gaps and also explore further ‘what works’. We also wanted to know more about the profiles of those being trained, how the training is evaluated, how it is implemented with students and passed on to other teachers. We commissioned Professor Julian McDougall to conduct the research for us, and the findings were fascinating.
Professor Julian McDougall, who conducted the work on behalf of Ofcom, observed that:
The need for media literacy education is most obvious at times of heightened concern around children and young people’s online behaviours. But those of us working in media literacy education know the importance of embedding the broad spread of media literacy skills to make sure children and young people are equipped to navigate the online world as responsible and informed digital citizens.
Our findings indicate that two of the Ofcom outcomes – “critical thinking about content” and “digital and media savvy” are best supported by existing media literacy training. The most frequently covered areas are resilience to online harms, critical awareness and evaluative skills. These findings confirmed that, in the context of this research, there exists a shared understanding of the skills that are central to media literacy.
Our work found that “content creation” and “civic participation” are significant gaps. Training teachers to develop the more active, creative aspect of media literacy is a significant gap, whilst the challenges of generating evidence of digital behaviour changes and positive actions are huge. In these ways, the outcomes of this study are in synch with previous research that tells us how developing media literacy learning through co-design, creative production and civic action is the most effective approach (Ofcom, 2024; Bournemouth University, 2024) but also the hardest to do. The current curriculum review in England will specifically consider children and young people’s access to creative subjects and our finding suggests that the inclusion of digital creativity would be valuable.
A highly significant finding from this research is that all respondents agreed that the lack of either a curriculum location (either as a subject in its own right or as a statutory cross-curricular topic) or a mandate for media literacy is a barrier to engagement and that, therefore, media literacy needs to be statutory and aligned to curriculum, and more than a ‘tick box exercise’.
Professor McDougall said:
Media literacy education is inconsistent across the UK and policy is lacking. There is a clear and urgent need to support media literacy practices in schools. Up to date and ongoing teacher training is a very important part of this.
We shared these results with the participating organisations and with the Making Sense of Media advisory panel to sense check the findings and gather expert feedback on how to take forward the recommendations. They highlighted the need to bring together the existing offer for schools and to consider the factors that motivate schools or individual teachers to focus on media literacy. They supported our approach of identifying “what works” and taking into consideration the views of children and young people who the training ultimately aims to benefit.
The review made five recommendations:
- Address gaps in current training – content creation and civic action
- Build on strengths in current training – critical thinking and ‘savvy’ engagement
- Develop a consistent, accredited training model
- Build in change objectives and evaluation to all training design
- Foster a joined-up approach with shared values, to make media literacy ‘everyone’s business’ in schools.
To deliver our commitment in the three year media literacy strategy, we will initially commission one of these teacher training courses to boost what is available for teachers. Looking ahead, we plan to work with the industry and teachers to address the gaps identified and make it easier for teachers to navigate the existing offer and develop their own whole school media literacy strategies.
We are grateful to Professor Julian McDougall and all the organisations who participated in this review and look forward to continuing to work alongside them as we develop this work.