From 'Beowulf' to Facebook: Comparing student perceptions of traditional language arts and new media literacy curricula

The purpose of this research was to examine the student perceptions of classroom quality of a hybrid British literature-media literacy pilot course that has the potential to replace the current senior language arts curriculum at an urban public high school in the southeastern United States. A convergent parallel mixed methods design was used to address the research questions of the study. The quantitative results indicated a significant difference in some areas between the student perceptions of classroom quality of the traditional language arts and new media literacy curricula. Although descriptive statistics indicated greater student perception of all of the constructs for the new media literacy curriculum than for the traditional language arts curriculum, only the greater student perceptions for meaningfulness, appeal, and self-efficacy were statistically significant. The qualitative results provided confirmation for the quantitative results in that participants described both curricula as challenging and the media literacy curriculum as more meaningful and engaging than the traditional language arts curriculum.;After both data sets were integrated, the quantitative data and the qualitative data were found to be highly congruent. The results of this study suggest that educators can design curricula that consider student perceptions of meaningfulness and appeal without sacrificing challenge or rigor. Additionally, combining the study of traditional literature-based language arts curriculum with the study of media literacy can allow curriculum designers to meet these goals within the context of secondary language arts courses.