Opinions of Turkish Language Prospective Teachers on Media Literacy Course

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to reveal opinions of Turkish language prospective teachers
receiving education at the faculty of teaching on "Media Literacy" course. Case study is used as a qualitative
research pattern in this study where the study group consists of 45 participants receiving education at
Turkish Language Education Department of the Faculty of Education, Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University.
Content analysis was carried out by means of the qualitative analysis software QSR NVivo 8.0 on the data
collected by using a structured interview form. The results of research indicate that Turkish language
prospective teachers define media literacy as the act of analyzing and interpreting messages of the media
and a critical perspective towards the media, and that objectives such as using media and adapting to the
developing world are decisive in their selection of this course. In addition, prospective teachers were found
out to consider that the media literacy course should be included in undergraduate programmes for Turkish
language teaching as they find it necessary for improving their basic skills, social lives and language skills.
In addition, it was found out that prospective teachers demand more frequent use of alternative measuring
and evaluation methods in the learning and teaching process of the course. The skills which the prospective
teachers think they have improved at the end of the course are mainly in cognitive domain, which has
revealed the necessity for the course to provide more learning outcomes as affective and behavioral skills.