The pedagogical value of children’s news : multimodal insights from a primary learning context

Abstract

This research aims to explore primary school teachers’ understanding of and relationship with the news as well as their awareness of the potential pedagogic value news programmes tailored for children hold. Moreover, it aims to explore which and how socio-semiotic modes are employed in children's news programmes. A mixed methods approach was employed to achieve these objectives. Primary school teachers were given the chance to interpret child-oriented news items through semi-structured interviews. Educators expressed their relationship with the news as adults and as children, current students’ relationship with the news together with ideas of how child-oriented news can be used as a pedagogical aid in the primary classroom. Thematic analysis was utilised to analyse teachers’ insights. This analysis showcased the extent to which teachers are ready to implement child-oriented news in their classrooms and what this entails for them keeping their students in mind. Furthermore, a socio-semiotic multimodal interpretation of various child-oriented news items was carried out. This process was guided by the MIRROR framework. These analyses formed the basis of numerous pedagogical recommendations with the intention of supplying primary educators with ideas on how to include child-oriented news items in their language lessons. Such pedagogical recommendations based on the educators’ insights and the socio-semiotic interpretation of child-oriented news items, may be modified as needed and implemented by teachers to offer their pupils contextualised educational experiences, leading to improved learning efficiency.