When you know better, do better: Developing antiracist, digitally literate educators through critical media literacy
Citation
O’Byrne, W. Ian; Crandall, Bryan Ripley; Price-Dennis, Detra; Witte, Shelbie; Goering, Christian Z; Dail, Jennifer S. (2024) When you know better, do better: Developing anti-racist, digitally literate educators through critical media literacy. In M. Barnes & R. Marlatt (Eds.), Teaching for Equity, Justice, and Antiracism with Digital Literacy Practices.
Abstract
In this chapter, we address the intersections of what it means to be a digitally literate educator as well as an anti-racist educator. Beginning with an exploration of literacy, digital literacy, and critical media literacy, we draw on socioemotional learning, Critical Race Theory in Education, and racial literacy to envision spaces in which preservice teachers and the educational systems that prepare them can move toward anti-racism and against complicity in inequitable systems. The chapter concludes with opportunities to leverage critical media literacy to support anti-racist, digitally literate educators as they embed inquiry, empathy, and connection in and out of their classrooms.
Notes
This chapter emerged from a collaboration that’s been years in the making — a group of scholars who kept finding ourselves in the same conversations about how digital tools and anti-racist pedagogy are too often kept separate from one another. The chapter tries to hold both at once.
What I kept thinking about while working on this is how much the framing matters. You can call something “digital literacy” and center it entirely on tool use, or you can recognize that every tool exists in a social context with power dynamics attached. A digital wildfire — misleading or harmful content spreading virally — is not just a media literacy problem; it’s a racial justice problem. The platforms that enable that spread are not neutral.
For preservice teachers especially, this intersection is where the real work is. We’re not just preparing them to use technology in classrooms; we’re preparing them to interrogate technology, to ask who it serves and who it harms, and to make choices about what they bring into their teaching and why. That’s a different kind of preparation, and this chapter is our attempt to map it.