NCTE Media Literacy Award
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2024 Award Recipient: T. Philip Nichols
Baylor University
T. Philip Nichols is an Associate Professor of English Education in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at Baylor University. His research explores how media technologies condition the ways we practice, teach, and talk about literacy and the implications of this conditioning for equitable public education. A former middle/high school English teacher, and a current teacher educator, Nichols’s work is deeply informed by classroom practice, and he regularly partners with teachers, schools, and districts to consider how media pedagogies might be better distributed and reinforced throughout our educational systems.
Nichols’s scholarship has been widely recognized. He was the recipient of an NAEd/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship (2017) and Postdoctoral Fellowship (2022), and he was also awarded the 2022 Early Career Achievement Award from the Literacy Research Association. His work appears in leading research journals, including Harvard Educational Review, Research in the Teaching of English, Reading Research Quarterly, Review of Research in Education, and Learning, Media, and Technology. He also frequently writes for practitioner journals (e.g., English Journal, Phi Delta Kappan), trade publications (Education Week, Edsource), and public venues (The Atlantic, Los Angeles Review of Books). He is the author of Building the Innovation School: Infrastructures for Equity in Today’s Classrooms (Teachers College Press, 2022), and the co-editor, with Antero Garcia, of Literacies in the Platform Society: Histories, Pedagogies, Possibilities (forthcoming, Routledge).
Nichols holds a Ph.D. in Literacy, Culture, and International Education from the University of Pennsylvania, where he also earned an M.A. in History and Sociology of Science.
Literacy is, and has always been, a technology of power. It can be used to liberate or subjugate, to nurture just futures or foreclose them. Reactionary interest groups know this; indeed, it is why they are so ruthlessly pursuing control over literacy education today. Banning books, narrowing curricula, instrumentalizing instruction — each is a tactic for delimiting not just what forms of reading and writing are valued in schools but, crucially, what work literacy can (and can’t) do in the lives of students and communities. As professional literacy educators, we have a vital role to play in countering such tactics — by critiquing and resisting them, yes, but also by advancing an alternative agenda for literacy education that is worth fighting for, rooted in commitments to humanistic inquiry, social justice, and mutual flourishing.
2024 Media Literacy Award Committee
Ryan Rish, University at Buffalo (SUNY), NY
Korina Jocson, York University, Toronto, Canada
Carrie Perry, Prew Academy, Sarasota, FL
Award Details
The NCTE Media Literacy Award will be presented at the NCTE Awards Session.
Application Deadline: May 1
A resolution passed by the members at the 2003 San Francisco Convention on Composing with Non-Print Media, made the creation of this award especially important. The resolution recommended the encouragement of preservice, inservice, and staff development programs that focus on new literacies, multi-media composition, and a broadened concept of literacy. The award showcases NCTE members who have developed innovative approaches for integrating media analysis and composition into their instruction. You can learn more about recent critical media literacy work by reviewing NCTE’s Task Force Report and the Squire Office’s Policy Brief.
NCTE membership is required for all applicants.
Current NCTE Executive Committee members are not eligible for this award. Recipients of this award are not eligible to receive any other Executive Committee approved awards in the same year, nor in the following year.
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Application Deadline: May 1
Please contact NCTEAwards@ncte.org with any questions.
Applying for the Award
The Media Literacy Award will be presented to an individual, team, or department that has implemented and refined exemplary media literacy practices in their school environment. The Award Selection Process will be based on a portfolio review by a selection committee. Only one award will be given each year.
The portfolio should be submitted electronically.
The key elements of the portfolio should demonstrate:
- Analysis, evaluation, and creation of media
- Reflective processes used by instructor(s) and participants
- Growth of media literacy instruction in the course/department
The portfolio must address the following criteria:
Evidence of sustained implementation of media literacy principles (recognized as the ability to access, analyze, evaluate, and create media messages) over time.
STATEMENT
- How have media literacy principles been reinforced over time during the course of study?
- What assignments, readings, strategies are used to show that media literacy is fundamental to the course?
EVIDENCE
Includes, but is not limited to:
- Assignments, lessons, and/or project descriptors
- Curriculum maps or unit plans
- Resource lists
- Examples of student work
- Grading rubrics and assessment standards
Describe the development of the course or unit and how it fits within the curriculum, providing evidence of innovation and imagination within the program. What is the context within which the work takes place: a course, a unit, a department?
STATEMENT
Questions to consider:
- Is this a lesson? A series of lessons? A unit?
- Is media literacy used in a variety of contexts and lessons?
- What issues have arisen while implementing media literacy?
- What obstacles have been overcome?
- How have the units/lessons/projects evolved over time?
EVIDENCE
Includes, but is not limited to:
- Revisions of units and lessons
- Student and teacher reflective instruments
- Assignments, lessons, and/or project descriptors
- Curriculum maps or unit plans
- Resource lists
- Examples of student work
- Grading rubrics and assessment standards
Evidence of collaboration in the media literacy classroom, within or outside the school.
STATEMENT
Questions to consider:
- How does this unit/lesson/project transcend the classroom?
- Do students work collaboratively? Do they reflect on the collaborative process in a formal manner?
- Does collaboration enhance the project/lesson/unit in specific ways that more traditional solo activity might not?
- Do students work with others outside the classroom?
- Do they work across academic disciplines? Across grade levels?
EVIDENCE
May include, but is not limited to:
- Revisions of units and lessons
- Student and teacher reflective instruments
- Assignments, lessons, and/or project descriptors
- Curriculum maps or unit plans
- Resource lists
- Examples of student work
- Grading rubrics and assessment standards
Evaluation of a portfolio of exemplary work, including high- or low-tech media compositions, syllabi, and course assignments to be submitted electronically, if possible.
STATEMENT
Questions to consider:
- What work is most representative of the focus on media literacy in my courses?
- How have assessments and teacher responses helped students create effective media literacy products?
- How has the practice of media literacy evolved over time in my course, and what artifacts best represent that?
- What best represents the ways we analyzed, evaluated, and created media?
- How have the projects/lessons/units evolved over time?
- What instruments and results show the reflection that goes into the developing of the course?
EVIDENCE
May include, but is not limited to:
- Revisions of units and lessons
- Student and teacher reflective instruments
- Assignments, project descriptors, resource lists, curriculum maps, and lesson or unit planning
- Student projects, examples of student work in all formats
- Grading rubrics and assessment standards
- Products of student work