Teachers' Perceptions of Students' News Literacy

Abstract

People need to consciously and critically analyze and evaluate mass media messages, especially in the light of increasing fake news; they need to be news literate. The logical time to start teaching such literacy is in K-12 educational settings so that all individuals have the opportunity to learn and practice news literacy. To concretely ascertain California middle and high school students’ level of news literacy, their teacher librarians were surveyed. Not only did the respondents indicate a need for news literacy instruction, but they also indicated that little curriculum attention was given to that need. Moreover, teacher librarians and classroom teachers need training on news literacy. Fake news is a wake-up call to educators and the community at large to gain competency in critically analyzing fake news in particular, and information in general.