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Provided
by the Journalism Education Association and the Scholastic Journalism
Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and
Mass Communication
Educators
who teach secondary school journalism must have a broad range
of knowledge and performance abilities. Although their courses
are frequently placed in a school’s English Department,
their teaching responsibilities go beyond what most English
or language arts curriculum requires. Therefore, these standards
reflect their need to be skilled in teaching writing, listening,
speaking, leadership skills, cooperative processes, press law
and ethics, fiscal responsibility, and media design and production.
The combination of these helps them prepare their students as
knowledgeable media producers and consumers who are essential
to our democracy.
Standard
#1A – Knowledge of Curriculum and Content/Classroom
Knowledge: Journalism teachers understand:
- Key
principles of journalism curriculum development, instruction
and assessment;
- A
variety of curriculum models to help frame journalism as a
unique discipline and profession;
- A variety of effective instructional strategies to help students
become active scholastic journalists;
- A solid foundation in law and ethics as it applies to scholastic
media, including First Amendment-related rights and responsibilities;
- The history and evolution of media; functions, limitations
and influences of media in society;
- News values for today’s media consumers;
- The
writing process as it relates to journalism (brainstorming,
questioning, reporting, gathering and synthesizing information,
writing, editing, and evaluating the final media product)
- A
variety of forms of journalistic writing (i.e. news, features,
opinion, etc.) and their appropriate style (i.e. Associated
Press, multiple sources with attribution, punctuation, etc.);
additional forms unique to journalism (i.e. headlines, cutlines,
plus visual presentations, etc.)
- Importance of matching language use, angle, and style with
intended audience;
- Value
of and skills needed to package media products effectively,
using various forms of journalistic design utilizing a range
of visual, auditory and interactive methods for a variety
of media;
- Value
of photojournalism to tell stories in compelling ways.
Performance: Journalism teachers:
- Select appropriate textbooks and teaching materials for classroom
use;
- design a journalism curriculum that is student-centered and
reflects students as continuous learners;
- Construct
lesson plans that cover multiple facets of journalistic writing
and visual communication;
- Utilize appropriate professional and scholastic media legal
and ethical policies and practices;
- Ensure students understand media’s role in a democracy
and their part in preserving it.
Standard #1B – Knowledge of Curriculum and Content/Student
Publications
Knowledge: Journalism teachers and media advisers understand:
- Key principles of journalism and mass media as they function
in a product-base curriculum;
- Organization of such a course so the process is more important
than the product, thus allowing for continuous student learning;
- A
variety of effective instructional strategies that help students
become active scholastic journalists;
- The value of technology for today’s and tomorrow’s
media;
- Law and ethics as it relates to scholastic media and its importance
in practice;
- The role of leadership training, fiscal responsibility, conflict
resolution and time management in student publications production.
- The importance of effective information design for all media.
Performance: Journalism teachers and media
advisers:
- Utilize computers as teaching and production tools;
- Use text, graphics, photography, radio, television, new media
as appropriate to emphasize the range of story-telling possibilities;
- Encourage creative approaches to information design and packaging
it for student media;
- Construct
and utilize financial guidelines for scholastic media relating
to subscriptions, advertising, activity funds, and fund raising;
- Construct and utilize staff organizational models that emphasize
responsibility, risk-taking and problem-solving;
- Construct and utilize production schedules that encourage
scholastic journalists to mirror that of professional journalists;
- Ensure students understand their roles as informational gatekeepers
in school-based media and their rights and responsibilities
as journalists.
Standard #2 – Knowledge of Learning Theory
Knowledge: Journalism teachers understand:
- Theories of human behavior that help nurture journalism students;
- Principles of effective classroom management and assessment;
- Rights and responsibilities within a journalism education
environment;
- Conditions that enhance the development of life-long learning;
- Methods
to help students understand and use media;
- The
influence of students’ diverse backgrounds, attitude,
interests and expectations on their communication skills;
- Interrelationship
and concurrent development of each communication skill (reading,
writing, speaking, listening, etc.)
- Ways
the public forms its opinions and the process/interaction
involved;
- Value
and effective use of research in a mass media setting.
Performance: Journalism teachers:
- Create a media-rich atmosphere for students to learn both
collaboratively and individually;
- Model
and nurture life-long learning;
- Use
knowledge of journalism/media skills to design appropriate
learning experiences;
- Integrate
a variety of media within instruction/curriculum;
- Select and order assignments that support integrated units
of instruction;
- Set meaningful goals as part of short- and long-term planning
for journalism instruction.
Standard #3 – Knowledge of and adaptation to diverse
students
Knowledge: Journalism teachers understand:
- Learning
theories and how they relate to individual students’
diverse backgrounds and learning styles;
- Influence
of diversity on the ways students learn and use media and
communication skills (Diverse learners reflect multiple ways
of knowing);
- Materials and instructional activities appropriate for helping
students to connect to, extend, and enhance their unique media
and communications skills development;
- Necessity
of journalistic diversity to allow for greater accuracy in
coverage.
Performance: Journalism teachers:
- Base
instruction on students’ strengths and build upon student
differences to further journalism learning;
- Plan
journalism instruction that accommodates the range of learners
and different learning needs and experiences;
- Use
a variety of materials (including publications, new media,
and computer software, etc.) and instructional activities
to empower students to use media and symbol systems effectively;
- Respect
the worth, contributions, abilities, and language of all learners;
- Create environments that support respectful approaches to
individual differences;
- Encourage staff diversity and use awareness of diversity to
enhance understanding of journalistic media.
Standard #4 – Knowledge of Instructional Environment
Knowledge: Journalism teachers understand:
- Use
of discussion for a variety of purposes to suit the needs
of students;
- Use of questioning to show understanding, help students articulate
their ideas and thinking processes, promote risk-taking and
problem-solving, facilitate recall of information, encourage
thinking, stimulate curiosity and help students to question
on their own;
- Value of conferencing to work with individual students;
- Environments that support learning about various aspects of
the media;
- Atmospheres that addresses the students’ needs for a
sense of belonging to the school and to the larger community
as journalism/media users.
Performance: Journalism teachers:
- Create classrooms that encourage active participation in learning
communities;
- Promote students’ appreciation and understanding of
audience and the ways to write for different audiences;
- Help students understand their unique role as disseminators
of information and their rights as journalists and media consumers;
- Employ
and model the use of technology as an essential component
of learning and production of media;
- Use various avenues to encourage students to take responsibility
for their learning and production of media;
- Encourage
students to consider journalism or mass media as a career
possibility.
Standard #5 – Assessment
Knowledge: Journalism teachers understand:
- Various
assessment strategies for reading, writing, speaking, listening,
viewing, designing;
- Apppropriate times to use each type of assessment;
- Ways
to use information from assessments to promote student learning;
- Interpretation
of various data assessing the learners’ skills and abilities;
- Ways
to convey those interpretations to students, parents, administrators,
etc.
Performance: Journalism teachers:
- Respond
effectively and constructively on an ongoing basis to students’
work;
- Recognize
students’ oral and written errors as a means of making
curricular choices for individual and group instruction;
- Design
a variety of assessment tools (e.g. selected and constructed
response items, portfolios, objective quizzes and tests, rubrics,
projects, publications);
- Use
assessment results to shape or revise instructional design
and/or strategies;
- Interpret
and report assessment methods and results to students, administrators,
parents and the public;
- Use
the requirements of state and national assessment programs
to make informed curricular choices and instructional strategies
as appropriate to journalism;
- Guide
students in learning to assess their own growth through creation
of career portfolios of their work, publications, photography,
new media.
Standard #6 – Professional Development
Knowledge: Journalism teachers understand:
- The
value of professional organizations/associations, conferences,
certification and licensure, advanced course work, and other
professional opportunities in the journalism field to enhance
professional growth;
- A
variety of ways to evaluate reflectively their own practice
and continue their own learning;
- The
importance of teacher collaboration and cross-disciplinary
cooperation;
- The
purposes of and ways to generate classroom research;
- The
value of enthusiasm in a dynamic journalism/media program.
Performance: Journalism teachers.
- Attend
conferences, workshops, graduate education classes, and other
professional development opportunities in the journalism field;
- Study
professional media and research relevant to journalism instruction
on a regular basis and conduct classroom research to improve
their practice;
- Participate
in continual personal and collegial reflection on practice;
- Use
a variety of ways to monitor the effects of their practices
on students, parents, colleagues and community professionals;
- Collaborate
with colleagues in journalism and other disciplines;
- Investigate
their own biases and seek to resolve problems that stem from
areas of conflict;
- Model
writing, designing, photographing, and effective journalism/media
skills and uses;
- Create
opportunities for professional/scholastic association critiques
of programs/publications.
The
Standards for Indiana Journalism Educators, State of Michigan
Professional Standards for the Preparation of Teachers of Journalism,
and the Journalism Standards Grades 6-12 from the State of Kansas
were the basis for many of these national standards.
Approved by the Board of Directors
of the Journalism Education Association,
April 2002
Approved by the membership of
the Scholastic Journalism Division
of the Association of Education in Journalism and Mass Communication
August 2002 |
