Media Literacy
Our Media Literacy Education work began in earnest in April 2020 to create a series of educational interventions to counter misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic and in the longer term. The Citizenship curriculum plays a central role in teaching about the role of the media in a democratic society and the importance of developing the media literacy of every citizen young (and older). Our Chief Executive has written more about this and you can read her article here.
So far our work has included the development of:
- a three part teacher continuing professional development (CPD) course designed and certificated by ACT
- a toolkit handling conspiracy in the classroom (coming soon)
- exemplar teaching resources for use with secondary aged pupils developed by ACT teachers
- teaching about the news short video teaching tips
- a series of engaging assets (podcasts, animations and infographics) that support effective media literacy education developed by Shout Out UK
- collaboration with UCL to develop and dissminate Conspiracy Theory guidance for schools.
Citizenship education aims to develop active and informed citizens who are politically literate and media literate. This new project builds on the work of ten ACT teachers who were part of an exchange visit to the USA in 2019. Since the exchange teachers have been developing their currriculum and teaching to incorporate a greater focus on media literacy education. 
Edition 51 of the ACT journal, 'Teaching Citizenship' was disseminated free to every seconday school in England summer 2020. The journal focuses on disseminating tools and teaching approaches that show how to incoroporate effective media literacy education into the citizenship curriculum. Articles from a range of experts, academics and news organisations are included. Our thanks to the US Embassy in London who supported this special edition and our media literacy work.
