Designing a Curriculum in Media Literacy for the Elementary School

To help the Ministry of Education with the redesigning of the textbooks, it was deemed that the inclusion of social media could prove beneficial, given that the way students use these media is improved. To find out how this could be implemented, a group of experts in three areas of culture, communication, and education was carefully selected and then interviewed. Data analysis lead to a model curriculum in which learning within the socio-educational environment, and exercising different types of thinking (critical, creative, and meditational) with concentration on self-awareness in thinking are emphasized. As for the content and its topics, skills necessary for identification of media effects, and actively responding to them, as well as awareness of the constituents of the Iranian-Islamic identity are highlighted. The goals in the constructed curriculum include improvement of personal capabilities like well-informed selection, critical thinking, and communication skills such as sign recognition and cultural sensitivity, alongside the ability to preserve Iranian-Islamic beliefs. In the area of evaluation, the curriculum emphasizes situational testing of both personal capabilities and communication skills.