Training Needs, Attitude toward Teaching and Media and Information Literacy Competencies of Selected Teachers in The Philippines

Abstract

 Media and information literacy (MIL) has been integrated in the Philippines’ K to 12 curriculum as a core Communication subject since 2016. Based on feedbacks of some teacher-participants to the seminars conducted by Philippine Association for Media and Information Literacy (PAMIL), they admitted that they still need more training programs since MIL is relatively new. This paper focuses on the survey conducted among 682 teachers to find out their profile, knowledge on MIL, attitude towards MIL teaching, and MIL competencies. The MIL teachers are generally female, married, with 26-30 years old of age and with three (3) years’ experience of teaching MIL In terms of their level of knowledge, two items have been answered positively: “MIL includes evaluation of media and information” and “MIL empowers audiences to use and produce media and information more responsibly.” Two items have been rated significantly on teachers’ attitude towards MIL teaching. These are “I assess student outputs based on learning competencies or outcomes “and “I ask my students to analyze and evaluate messages before producing their improved versions.” Developing search strategies/search processes to find media and information topped the list of training topics that the teachers wanted to pursue. This is followed by the area on understanding and questioning context, ownership, regulation, audiences, economic, legal, privacy, and security issues of media and information. These top two topics must be prioritized in the training of media and information literacy teachers in the future.