This book provides a practical and theoretical look at how media education can make learning and teaching more meaningful and transformative. This second edition includes more resources, photographs, and updated information as well as two new chapters: one exploring the pedagogical potential for using photography in the classroom and the other documenting a successful university course on critical media literacy for new teachers. The book explores the theoretical underpinnings of critical media literacy and analyzes a case study involving an elementary school that received a federal grant to integrate media literacy and the arts into the curriculum. Combining cultural studies with critical pedagogy, critical media literacy aims to expand the notion of literacy to include different forms of mass communication, information communication technologies, and popular culture, as well as deepen the potential of education to critically analyze relationships between media and audiences, information, and power. This book is a valuable addition to any education course or teacher preparation program that wants to promote twenty-first century literacy skills, social justice, civic participation, media education, or critical uses of technology. Communications classes will also find it useful as it explores and applies key concepts of cultural studies and media education.

Contents: Teaching the Media: Competing Approaches, Media - Activism, and Core Concepts of Critical Media Literacy - Critical Media Literacy Is Not an Option: Overview of Media Education in the U.S. and Abroad - Voices from the Trenches: Elementary School Teachers Speak about Implementing Media Literacy - The Earlier the Better: Expanding and Deepening - Literacy with Young Children Photography as Pedagogy with Praxis - Teacher Education: A Launching Pad for Critical Media Literacy - Thinking Critically in a Converging World: Forces of Change in the Information Age.