Exploring Critical Awareness of Media and Teacher Education: An Experience with Colombian ELT Pre-Service Teachers

Abstract

Today’s media spectacle is shaping societies, cultures, and even our own values and identities at a global scale. Even though media can be used to promote education, democratic self-expression, and social progress, it is often used to perpetuate social injustices, prejudice, and violence. Media texts are exponentially displayed in physical and virtual public spaces and their impact on humanity is unimaginable. Teachers of all fields face the challenge and the responsibility to educate sensitive humans who are able to critically consume or produce media messages. English language teachers are no exception. In this paper, the author describes a qualitative research study conducted by a teacher educator exploring how a group of Colombian pre-service English teachers developed critical awareness of media as they critically deconstructed advertisements displayed in the public spaces of their rather rural communities. Implications for teacher education emerging from this study and new questions for further research will be presented.