By Scott Burg and Alex Gurn, Ph.D.
Rockman et al recently completed a research study examining classroom pedagogy connected to and inspired by KQED Teach, an online learning platform about teaching with digital media. As a core component of KQED’s educational programs, KQED Teach helps teachers meet the rapidly evolving digital media needs of today’s classrooms. Through six case studies across grades 3-5 and 9-12 from 5 school districts in 3 states, we highlight the many ways KQED Teach supported active professional learning for educators looking to:
- improve their teaching practice
- refresh or adapt existing digital media activities with students,
- introduce entirely new approaches to enhance youth literacy and learning.
These case studies revealed a variety of positive, often intertwined impacts on both teacher and student learning. While acknowledging that no educational innovation will be effective with all students, this study indicates that thoughtfully planned classroom media production benefits student and teacher learning in direct and indirect ways. Some examples include:
- Promoting teacher learning and experimentation. KQED Teach served as a catalyst for educators to explore and discover new ways to enhance instruction, regardless of their background experience. Before taking a KQED Teach course on digital storytelling, one librarian struggled to capture quality images or video with a smartphone. Afterwards, she published a website that used video to document innovative library practices. She described the importance of KQED Teach’s underlying respect for educators:
“The subtext of the KQED is respect, intellectualism, and a real appreciation of anyone who’s watching. Those are the production values that go into a KQED Teach lesson, and that makes me feel as an adult student that I’m being respected and that my level of understanding is okay.”
- Shifting teacher/student relationships. Much of the work in developing media for the classroom is student-centered, where teachers take on the role of observers or guides, learning valuable skills and knowledge alongside or directly from students. The director of a high school theater program in Northern California first learned about podcasting from KQED Teach. To apply this new method, while rehearsing for school’s spring play, her students produced a series of podcasts to reflect on their experiences as actors and their relationships with other members of the cast. During the podcasting activity, the teacher gave her students the freedom to develop the content and narrative in a way that resonated with them. By putting students in control of the learning process, traditional classroom roles were reversed; the teacher became more of an observer at a critical juncture in students’ learning about themselves and the play. The teacher explained:
“I don’t have a vested interest in the product looking exactly the way I want it to. The vision isn’t mine. It really is something the kids and I create together. I also think that it’s really important that the kids watch that I’m also trying to learn. They know more than I do and we all know that.”
- Promoting social and emotional learning. Media production establishes new criteria for self-expression and provides opportunities for students to develop confidence in their creative and technical abilities, reshape their approach to learning, and counter long held fixed or negative mindsets. In an Oklahoma City inner-city high school located in a neighborhood marred by gang violence and poverty, a technical education teacher applied digital media as a way to improve student self-image and their sense of community. Using digital photography and e-portfolio skills derived in part from KQED Teach, her students produced and distributed their own customized yearbooks. The yearbook activity allowed students to find and hone their own voice, offsetting a destructive personal narrative that led to a negative growth mindset.
The results of this research are being used to inform program design and thinking. For instance, KQED Education is disseminating the case studies with their product and content development team to shape the construction of design personas, or profiles that represent different types of users. Denise Sauerteig, KQED’s Learning & Evaluation Manager, explained, “Design personas lead to good product development. By having these case studies, we can ensure our future product development is grounded in the needs of real-world classrooms.”
Based in part on early stage formative evaluation work conducted by Rockman that informed program development, this tool has moved from a regional focus to national scope. PBS and KQED recently announced a partnership to offer PreK-12 educators a pathway to free certification in media literacy through KQED Teach. The PBS Media Literacy Educator Certification by KQED recognizes educators who excel in creating and implementing instruction with media, and provides support to help teachers accelerate these skills. Educators who exemplify strong media literacy competencies will be invited to submit a portfolio of work demonstrating their achievements on KQED Teach.
To learn more about our research for KQED Teach, see examples of student media products, and explore how classroom media integration challenges prevailing assumptions about curriculum and instruction, please read the research report here.