The purpose of this study is to analyze how the perspective of critical literacy, the essence of media language education, is applied in the assessment questions (heretofore ‘questions’) regarding news-advertisement in the 2007 Revised Curriculum ...
The purpose of this study is to analyze how the perspective of critical literacy, the essence of media language education, is applied in the assessment questions (heretofore ‘questions’) regarding news-advertisement in the 2007 Revised Curriculum Language Arts of Elementary School.
The topics of this study are the following: first, what content do the news/advertisements evaluation questions ask the student to analyze? Secondly, which levels of the cognitive process do the evaluation questions of news/advertisement require of the student? Thirdly, do the questions on news/advertisement evaluate an attitude of acceptance and production of further discourse on the content topics?
For the purposes of this research, questions on news and advertisements were collected from existing teacher manuals, materials from the departments of education of different cities and provinces, and internet sites concerning elementary teaching and learning; both quantitative and qualitative research were performed and verified through an organization of experts.
The results of the study are as follows: firstly, of the materials collected for this study, the questions that evaluated critical literacy were 36% for news-related questions (108 questions out of 298 questions) and 36% for advertisement-related questions (68 questions out of 188 questions). The questions regarding news/advertisement tended to be more focused on literal comprehension rather than on critical literacy. Furthermore, even those questions on critical literacy mostly evaluated the student’s ability to make inferences using information from within the text rather than the ability to comprehend the text on a larger scale of social and cultural contexts.
Secondly, out of the total number of questions on critical literacy (108 questions in total), the following numbers reflected the questions types on each level of the Revised Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: 25% on ‘remember’, (27 questions), 21% on ‘understand’ (23 questions), 21% on ‘apply’ (23 questions), 27% on ‘analyze’ (29 questions), and 6% on ‘evaluate’ (6 questions). Out of the total of 68 questions on advertisements, 19% were on ‘remember’ (13 questions), 52% on ‘understand’ (35 questions), 15% on ‘apply’ (10 questions), 7% on ‘analyze’(5 questions), and 7% on ‘evaluate’ (5 questions). In the case of news-related questions, those that asked learners to ‘evaluate’ were relatively few and advertisement-related questions were heavily biased on the ‘understand’ level. Neither news nor advertisement-related questions were found to be on the level of ‘create’ as according to the taxonomy table.
Thirdly, in order to analyze whether the questions produced an attitude of acceptance and discourse on the topics, the study evaluated whether the reading content contained text found outside of textbooks; only 32% (35 questions out of 108 questions) of news-related questions and 13% (9 questions out of 68 questions) of advertisements-related questions were found to contain text taken from a non-textbook source. As most of the questions were based on the materials or topics presented in textbooks, learners were likely to answer the questions based on memorized knowledge and simple recall processes rather than applying critical thinking skills necessary for the production of actual discourse on the topics presented.
Fourthly, within the materials collected, ‘showing an attitude of critical acceptance’ was rarely evaluated. It could be concluded that ‘attitude’ is not evaluated in the 2007 Revised Curriculum of Korean Language Arts of Elementary School and there is a limit to the scope of multiple choice and short-answer questions in the curriculum to evaluate the moralistic aspects of the learner.
Therefore, based on the research above, the following conclusion can be drawn:
First, questions on news/advertisement must be developed to evaluate a student’s ability in the following areas: understand the characteristics of media discourse, develop a viewpoint after separating fact and opinion, recognize the effects of various methods of expression and intentions behind text, judge the reliability and validity of information, and adopt an attitude of critical acceptance.
Second, the questions should be produced on multiple levels of educational objectives to avoid a bias towards any one level.
Third, the evaluation materials should utilize the actual texts produced in the students’ everyday lives instead of material found in textbooks; even if topics are those previously introduced in textbooks, the text should not be a reiteration of material already presented in the said textbooks.
Fourth, assessment methods should be varied instead of focusing on the traditional pen and paper method; a wide range of assessment methods should be utilized to not only evaluate the learners’ knowledge and skills but also an attitude of acceptance towards critical discourse on the topics presented.