Why should teachers care about digital literacy? Explore the potential benefits and or challenges depending on your reading.

Being digitally literate is to have the ability to understand, evaluate and integrate information and materials from the wide variety of formats that are available today. It is because of this that I believe that it is essential for teachers to care about digital literacy, particularly in a society where the majority of individuals, including children, have such easy accessibility to new technologies and media.

There are a wide variety of aspects to the digital world that are important to consider, especially when considering how often children are exposed new technologies such as TV, the internet, computer games and mobile technology. However from reading Dr. Linda Papadopoulos report- Sexualisation of Young People Review- which has been commissioned by the Home Office Violent Crime Unit for Together We Can End Violence Against Women, it is clear to see one of the key issues concerned in terms of children.

Sexualisation is the imposition of adult sexuality on to children and young people before they are capable of dealing with it, mentally, emotionally or physically and therefore is a risk that all teachers should be considering within school.  A large amount of the material out there available to children through a variety of mediums is often very sexualised, whether that be through advertising on TV, the characters within computer games as well as the aims of computer games or articles on the internet. These can range from the images of adults being sexualised or in some cases of children being sexualised, whether that be through clothing, make-up, posing, or the general message that is being given through the use of language. Another key factor that is important to consider is the stereotyping of gender that is also represented, particularly in video games, as research has found that there is often a notable lack of strong female characters and that male characters are often portrayed as being aggressive (Dill and Thill, 2007).

Based on theories of learning, such as the Social Learning Theory (Bandura, 1971) it is assumed that children learn from observing others attitudes and behaviours as well as seeing the outcomes of these behaviours and then reflecting this in their own behaviour. Therefore by exposing children to this, they are at risk of maturing before they should due to the high exposure. It is important to consider that children’s ability to interpret messages is directly linked to their ability to understand abstract behaviour, and therefore exposing children who are not yet equipped to handle it can have a negative impact.

It is thought that based on this, children can often be impacted in terms of having a negative body image, which in turn can lead to a decrease in mental health due to low self-esteem , as well as having a significant impact on the level of violence. This can have a significant impact in schools as in relation to this it has often been observed that sexual harassment and gendered and sexualised name-calling and bullying are on the rise in both primary and secondary schools (Duncan, 2004).

It is because of this that Papadopoulos (2010) recommends that education and schools are a key place to start in ensuring children are digitally literate as we cannot prevent this sort of material reaching children, however we can make an impact on how they process the information in the hope that they do this in a critical way as well as how to use the various outlets available within new technologies in a productive way.

She makes the point which I feel is particularly important to consider that although parents inevitably have to take some responsibility as to how their children use the internet, we cannot realistically expect them to take complete responsibility and that as informed educators we are in a place of authority to ensure that children are safe from this.

Bibliography

Bandura, A. (1971). Social learning theory of aggression. Control of aggression: Implications from basic research, 201–250

Dill, K., & Thill, K. (2007). Video game characters and the socialization of gender roles: Young people’s perceptions mirror sexist media depictions. Sex Roles, 57, 851–864.

Duncan.C., & Loretto, W. (2004). Never the right age? Gender and age-based discrimination in employment, Gender, Work and Organization 11, 95-115

Papadopoulos , L. (2010) Sexualisation of Young People Review Home Office (Executive Summary)