Assessing Teacher Candidates’ Attitudes on Critical Media Literacy Education

This thesis will explore Ontario teacher candidates’ perspectives on critical media literacy to gain an understanding of the skills and tools they need to constructively approach and teach future students about the subject. In addition, the prospect of introducing remixed, student-created board games into classrooms will be examined. This thesis is guided by the following primary research question (RQ1): What are pre-service teachers’ current perspectives and understandings of critical media literacy? Several sub-research questions will also be addressed: what have teacher candidates learned about critical media literacy (RQ2)? What skills and tools do they need to effectively teach their future students about critical media literacy (RQ2a)? What professional development opportunities have teacher candidates engaged in related to critical media literacy (RQ2b)? This thesis uses one-on-one, semi structured interviews as the primary methodology to better understand the unique perspectives of the teacher candidates who partook in this study.