Eric K. Jones

One of the most common obstacles the author finds when teaching media literacy courses is student insensitivity. Although this can exist for many different reasons, the media critiques that students submit in this type of class indicate that they've become indifferent to misogynistic, classist, and racist stereotypes. On the collegiate level, this is most evident with students who are just starting their first year. According to the University of California Los Angeles' Higher Education Research Institute (2010), only 33.1% of incoming freshman college students indicate that they thought promoting racial understanding is very important or essential in their college careers. Reports like this have prompted the author to create a teaching strategy that directly addresses this insensitivity. After years of teaching these kinds of courses, the author has realized that a good way to manage such attitudes is to encourage students to collectively construct a "Social Responsibility Contract" during the class. This article explains the rationale, the application, and the results of implementing this strategy in a media diversity course. (Contains 1 table and 1 note.) Download: http://eric.ed.gov/?q=media literacy&ft=on&ff1=dtySince_2010&ff2=subMedia Literacy&pg=4&id=EJ955947… (plus d'informations)