Linking critical literacy and media literacy in an academic preparation program

The literature shows curriculum design for critical literacy development is commonly organised on a theme-based principle. This article, in contrast, emerges from experience in an academic preparation program in which the organizing principle for critical reading module design is not theme but text-type, specifically news reports of the ‘hard news’ genre in Australian English-language newspapers. Prefaced with a sketch of the context in which this alternate approach evolved and an outline of the view of ‘criticality’ that underlies it, this article offers an account of the theoretical evolution of the approach through reviewing insights from the literature on critical literacy and media discourse analysis. Insights from both literatures are distilled in a set of ‘Critical Reading Guidelines’ specifically tailored to ‘hard news’ texts. The rationale in the context of an academic preparation program is also addressed: developing critical media literacy is seen as an effective means of advancing standards of academic literacy among non English-speaking background students on the threshold of Australian academia.