Civic engagement in polarized times: NLP’s Tracee Stanford on how news literacy helps
As America prepares to celebrate its 250th anniversary, teachers from across the country are planning educational experiences that support, challenge and inspire students to create a more perfect union.
That’s always been the goal at DBI Squared Institute — Democracy Building Instruction through Document Based Inquiry — at Boise State University. If that sounds like a mouthful, just know this: It’s a teaching approach that focuses on using original documents like newspaper clippings, photographs and other primary sources, as well as news literacy. The goal is to spark respectful dialogue around difficult issues, and ultimately, civic engagement that helps make our communities stronger.
Earlier this month, the News Literacy Project participated for the third time in the institute’s week-long summer convening, an intensive training opportunity for a select group of educators. For the convening, our experts led a dozen sessions to provide educators with a strong foundation in how to teach news literacy.
We asked the News Literacy Project’s Tracee Stanford, who co-led this year’s training for the institute, to explain why news literacy is central to civic engagement, how news literacy skills fit into America’s founding story and how to teach news literacy in polarizing times. Her answers are below, lightly edited for length and clarity.
How does news literacy instruction support civic engagement?
We know from our research that students who are taught news and media literacy lessons are more likely to engage in civic-minded activities, such as following the news or pushing back against misinformation.
Being able to recognize credible information is an important first step toward getting students to participate effectively in their local communities and in our larger society. It’s healthy to disagree about important issues, but news literacy can lead to more productive conversations by grounding debates in the facts. It helps students form their own opinions about what really matters to them — not based on information that is false or misleading, or that is designed to persuade them without them even realizing it.
As America celebrates its 250th anniversary, how does news literacy support some of the country’s founding ideals?
The founders knew that a responsive and effective government depends on people being informed and engaged. That’s evident in our First Amendment protections. News literacy education helps provide a foundation for informed civic participation by teaching students how to find information they can trust, share and act on. It also helps students understand why the founders included press freedoms in the Constitution. Here again, we know that news literacy education can make a difference: After completing news literacy lessons, 81% of students recognized that a free press is very important to a healthy democracy — a gain of 17 percentage points.
At a time when many people are polarized or distrustful of the press, how can teachers incorporate news literacy into their lessons?
One tip is to approach the news just like any other text. Whether it’s a piece of poetry or a news story, teach students to read the information critically, to look for evidence, and to support their conclusions based on facts and evidence. Encourage students to compare coverage from more than one source and consider how their own biases and life experiences might affect how they perceive news coverage.
