Reading the World for Power and Privilege: A Case Study within a Social Issues Teacher Education Course

In a qualitative pedagogical case study of pre-service teachers at a mid-size southwestern Christian University, a critical media literacy framework was applied to a required undergraduate teacher education course that included diversity issues such as class, gender, LGBTQ, culture, religion and race within the educational and schooling contexts. The researchers have noted that issues of power and privilege can be rather abstract and student resistance is common. The analysis techniques and concepts of critical media literacy (Kellner, 2007), however, offered the participants meaningful examples (White, 2003) of the course topics and aided them in critically reflecting upon their own personal understandings. Further, several participants, initially unaware of course topics, began to engage in independent interrogation of the media with which they are continually confronted within their daily lives in and out of the classroom. Such reflection augments the professional dispositions of teachers and offers the promise that teacher candidates will, in turn, teach media analysis tools and disrupt neo-liberal mainstream narratives within their own classrooms