Abstract:

The Media Information Literacy has been developed through discussion among international organizations for more than 40 years, and various cases in media education have been reported from schools. This Media Information Literacy had admitted to involve an important element of contemporary culture, and focused towards encouraging citizen’s active participation in society rather than condemn or commend the power of media. So far, the recognized curriculum and boundary of Media Information Literacy have been expanded by the UNESCO. Especially, the UNESCO Paris Agenda expanded target of Media Information Literacy to all ages, and teachers were expected to play a leading role in society. Subsequently, proposed teacher training was updated to involve Media Information Literacy for not only school education, but also civic education. Here, the UNESCO offered the seven competencies of Media Information Literacy for in-service teachers.

That is:
1) Understanding the role of media and information in democracy,
2) Understanding media content and its uses,
3) Accessing information effectively and efficiently,
4) Critically evaluating information and information sources,
5) Applying new and traditional media formats,
6) Situating the sociocultural content of media content,
7) Promoting Media Information Literacy among students and managing required changes.

In fact, these competencies involved citizenship and lifelong learning that has not been introduced in Japanese school education.
Unfortunately, policy development and treatments of human resource development of Media Information Literacy in Japanese schools are limited, and it is seen that high concentration upon media uses for school subjects are existed. In addition, shortage of governmental budget assistances has considerably weakened ICT equipment, infrastructure, and uses in schools, even though a world leading ICT infrastructure spreads Japanese society and students’ home.

Then, this empirical study investigated current awareness state of in-service teachers in Japan by referring seven competencies proposed by UNESCO. Their experiences to attend related training workshops and recognition of importance in Media Information Literacy competencies were collected by questionnaire method. On the other side, opinions of training needs of ICT training leaders were valued by using Multi Criteria Decision Making Method.

Finally, collected data of more than 200 in-service teachers were compared with decision of ICT training leaders. And, extracted strategies for the Board of Education to design Media Information Literacy trainings of school teachers are proposed.

Keywords:

Media Information Literacy, In-service Training, Japan, Civic Education.