More than 500 Teachers from Romania Want to Take the CIJ’s Media Literacy Course
Bucharest, 5 October 2023. For the International Day of Education, the Center for Independent Journalism (CIJ) celebrates the profession, as well as the growing community of teachers interested in learning and teaching media literacy. More than 500 teachers from all over the country applied for a place on the CIJ’s media literacy course starting next week.
Media literacy has been part of the CIJ’s work since its foundation, 29 years ago. Before being included in a separate course, the concepts were integrated into journalism or civic engagement courses for students. “Young people were always telling us that they would like us to teach the adults in their lives what we taught them: how to verify information, what a news story is, what are the differences between facts and opinions, persuasion techniques and many, many more. But we couldn’t do it on our own, so seven years ago we set up a course, which has been accredited since 2020, allowing teachers of Romanian language and literature to incorporate these concepts into their classroom lessons. And the fact that more and more teachers want to teach media literacy confirms that the solution we proposed then and the effort put in by the teacher trainers, by all those who infuse media literacy in the classroom, is paying off”, says Cristina Lupu, CIJ’s Executive Director.
Established in 1994 by UNESCO and celebrated every year on 5 October, this year’s Education Day theme draws attention to the need to “reverse the teacher shortage” and the cumulative efforts needed to support “The teachers we need for the education we want”.
As part of the Media Literacy Programme, from 2017 to this day, the CIJ has trained nearly 550 teachers from 195 schools from 98 cities who have worked in classrooms with over 60,000 pupils. But the potential is nearly 10 times greater. According to the National Institute of Statistics, 595,252 pupils were enrolled in high schools in the school year 2022-2023. The need for media literacy is even greater.
“In recent years, the effects of misinformation have become more painful than ever. We have already seen families divided and protests sparked by false information, and we somehow feel that this is just the beginning. Especially as AI opens new doors to misinformation. But we believe that the fight against misinformation starts with a generation of young people better trained in critical thinking and that media literacy works regardless of technology. We want to reach at least 175,000 pupils by 2030 and for that we need everyone’s support, be they young people, parents, teachers, media professionals, basically anyone who wants to be better informed,” adds Cristina Lupu.
Most applications came from teachers from Botoșani, Bucharest, Constanța, Cluj, Galați, Iași, Prahova and Suceava counties, some of the areas where there already are many teachers teaching media literacy in Romanian language and literature classes. “In order for at least 30% of Romanian students to have an introduction to media literacy, we are also encouraging teachers from other areas of the country to sign up for the next sessions of the course, for which we will open registration in early 2024”, adds Cristina Lupu.
Of the more than 500 teachers who applied, only 100 will attend the course accredited by the Ministry of Education, “Introduction to Media Literacy for Teachers of Romanian Language and Literature and Related Subjects in High Schools” within the Media Literacy Programme, starting next week. The other teachers will be able to be part of the next generations trained within the programme.
Those starting the course on 13 October are the sixth generation of teachers trained as part of the programme. The CIJ Media Literacy course has 15 transferable credits and runs from 13 October to 27 November 2023. Altogether, it includes 60 hours of online sessions with trainers and individual study activities on the media literacy platform. Teachers will then submit a portfolio for final assessment, and classroom implementation will be mentored by CIJ from October 2023 to June 2024. CIJ will provide teachers with activity scenarios during the course that they can apply in the classroom, and various media literacy resources that can be used with students, when the course is over.
The costs for this generation of courses are covered by the CIJ through a partnership with the Romanian American Foundation and the BROD project – Bulgarian-Romanian Observatory for Digital Media.
For more information, contact CIJ:
Adriana Trocea, Communications, Brand and Fundraising Manager, adriana@cji.ro, 0721296965
Information for editors
More about the media literacy course: https://cji.ro/incep-inscrierile-pentru-cursul-de-educatie-media-adresat-profesorilor/
Free media literacy resources: https://educatiemedia.cji.ro/
