Şakir ÇINKIR; Özcan PALAVAN; Elif MERCAN; Abdullah N.DİCLE; Alper KESTEN; Cevat ELMA
Description:
The purpose of this study is to identify students’ attitudes toward the media literacy courses in Turkey. The study is designed as a quantitative study, and “Media Literacy Education Attitude Scale” (MLEAS) was used for the survey. The research population covers all seventh grade students who took a media literacy course during the academic year 2006-2007 in five pilot cities (İstanbul, İzmir, Ankara, Erzurum and Adana). In order to evaluate the reliability and validity of MLEAS, the scale was applied to 120 students from Ahmet Vefik Paşa Primary School, one of the pilot schools, in June 2006. For MLEA , four sub- factors were determined, and Internal Consistency Reliability (Cronbach alpha) and total item correlations were calculated for each subfactor. Collected data was analyzed with SPSS® 15.0 statistical package program. In order to compare the data according to pilot city variable; the frequency, percentage and arithmetic mean of the data were calculated, and one way variance analysis was used. According to the study results, the students who took a media literacy course point out that media fails to show concern about protecting cultural and social values and does not fulfill its responsibilities regarding informing people about news and facts. The students state that the instructional materials and class discussions were adequate, but they did not like the teaching activities used by the teachers. They also point out that the classroom activities and teaching strategies were insufficient for the course. Finally, the results of study show that the students shared their learning with their families and friends, and this sharing created a positive effect both on families and friends.