Media literacy education in primary school second grade Turkish lessons: An action research

AbstractWhen the field and applications related to the reflections of media literacy on educational systems are analyzed, there are mainly two types of applications. The first type of application is the placement of media literacy education into educational systems within the scope of independent courses. The second type is the integration of media literacy education with the current curriculum. It has been observed that with the last 20 years, the leading countries in media literacy education do not employ the first approach anymore; rather, they give media literacy education integrated with mother language education, social studies, health sciences and citizenship courses. This study aims at developing a proposal of model in regard to integrating media literacy education with Turkish courses in the Second Grade of the Primary schools and applying the developed model within the scope of the action research approach.The study is consisted of two parts. The first part includes detection of the acquisitions in the mother language education curriculum of the countries which are leaders in media literacy education and through these acquisitions, development of a model proposal through integration of media literacy education with Turkish courses. In this phase, document review method was applied and thus the acquisitions defined in the related curriculum were assesses through content analysis. MAXQDA© qualitative data analysis program was employed in data coding, finding the themes, arranging the themes, defining and interpreting the findings. As a result of the analysis, it is found out that Ontario state of Canada, the USA, Australia and England have high rate of media literacy education integration with the curriculum of mother language education. Afterwards, these acquisitions of media literacy were reanalyzed in MAXQDA© and their common themes were found out. Considering the common themes, media literacy acquisitions for ?Turkish Course Teaching Program and Guide (6,7,8. Grades)? were proposed. Prior to the application, these gains were finalized in accordance with the advices of specialists.The second part of the research is where the action research was carried out. The research was conducted in a period of 28 class hours in 6 weeks at Class 8/C in a primary school in Çanakkale city centre. The students in this class had parents with high socio-economic status. During the process of application, all 5 hours of Turkish courses in 8/C were taught in accordance with the proposed model packet program. It was conducted by the researcher. In order to accumulate data during the process of application, 13 different qualitative and quantitative data collecting tools were employed. By these tools, 1900 pages document and 25 hours of voice and visual record were collected. SPSS© and MAXQDA© computer based data analysis programs were employed for the analysis of the collected data.During the process of action research, it was discovered that the education provided in accordance with the proposed model increased the level of media literacy, made the classes more enjoyable and affected the attitudes of students towards Turkish courses in a positive way. Furthermore, it was found out that in addition to expanding textual perception, it shifted traditional literacy level based on alphabet to multimodal literacy process.Media literacy education is provided in many countries by integrating it with the education of mother language. This approach is a significant alternative for 13 million primary school students in our country to get media literacy education. It costs far less in comparison to giving media literacy education course as an elective separate course. It is also thought that the education, which would be given in accordance with the proposed model, would bring significant opportunities for the Turkish courses. During the production and sense making process of media communications that encircles the individuals today, it will provide a considerable opportunity for the Turkish courses to fulfill their tasks.Key Words: Mother language education, media literacy education, integrated media literacy approach, action research.