Empowering teachers to educate critical online readers

Abstract

Educating critical online readers who can navigate purposefully, critically, and responsibly in online spaces is a fundamental goal of education. However, constantly changing online environments, evolving digital reading practices, and widespread misinformation pose significant challenges to achieving this goal. Therefore, teacher education should support teachers in this endeavor. This chapter presents five design principles to support teachers’ confidence in promoting students’ engagement in and learning of critical online reading. The principles include 1) providing theoretical knowledge about critical online reading and how it could be taught, 2) facilitating instructional design by modeling and sharing existing materials and practices, 3) supporting collaborative instructional design and experimentation in the classroom, 4) offering opportunities to provide and receive feedback, and 5) providing opportunities for systematic reflection. In addition, we illustrate how the design principles were implemented in formal teacher education and teacher professional development courses. The pre- and in-service teachers’ experiences of the courses suggest that ap- plying the design principles in coordinated way is a promising practice to support teachers’ self-efficacy.