Reading between the lines: media literacy in the Psychology classroom

As part of our continuing series in LabTalk from Monash university science educators, this article presents a discussion of the work of Prof Susan A. Nolan and Dr Karen Marangio while Priya Rana reflects on what this means for her teaching.

Media analysis has been a suggested VCE Psychology school-based assessment task for decades. The new VCE Psychology Study Design (2023- 2027) puts greater emphasis on this assessment and the need to utilize recent (up to one year old) articles. It opens the door for psychology educators to be more intentional than ever before about helping students think critically about psychology-related information that they encounter across a range of contexts, whether from a traditional news outlet or TikTok. Given the rampant misinformation and disinformation with which we are bombarded, media and information literacy is an essential skill for our students; and psychology classes are an ideal context to teach this skill.