Podcasts and Critical Media Literacy with Drs. Anne Gill and Olivia Stewart

Podcasts and Critical Media Literacy with Drs. Anne Gill and Olivia Stewart 

In today’s episode host Matt Sroka chats with Drs. Anne Gill and Olivia Stewart about the instructional implications of using podcasts framed by a critical media literacy framework in a high school social justice classroom. This conversation centers on their article for The Journal for Adolescent & Adult Literacy titled: The instructional implications of a critical media literacy framework and podcasts in a high school classroom

Dr. Anne Gill is an Assistant Professor of Social Studies Education at West Chester University, where she is part of the Secondary Education and K-12 Health and Physical Education Department. She works closely with pre-service social studies teachers to prepare them for effective, culturally responsive, and impactful instruction at the secondary level. Dr. Gill's research interests center on innovative teaching methods, particularly integrating social media and media texts into classroom instruction. She is passionate about fostering critical media literacy in the social studies classroom, emphasizing media analysis and incorporating diverse voices and stories—especially those that challenge dominant narratives.

Dr. Olivia G. Stewart is an Assistant Professor of Literacy at St. John's University in New York City. Her research interests center on the inclusion of critical digital literacies and multimodal assignments in classrooms, particularly for academically marginalized students, to counter traditional power structures often found in increasingly outdated school policies and oppressive systems. She examines how students can use various digital media for authorship that allows them to make meaning in non-traditional forms to push back on “what counts” as writing in today’s classrooms. From a critical theoretical perspective, she also examines how teachers and students can co-create spaces to understand the relationships between power and language and the inherently non-neutral ideologies that are conveyed through texts.

She has also applied this critical lens to: 1) research surrounding AI, creating a framework for critically engaging AI in education, 2) and humanizing online learning environments, conducting studies on humanizing online courses to improve equity and to explore what elements serve to best humanize courses, focusing on multimodality and other contributing factors.

Resources:

The instructional implications of a critical media literacy framework and podcasts in a high school classroom