🧠 AI Ed Wiki

📄 Research Article

Technology, Education and Critical Media Literacy: Potential, Challenges, and Opportunities

◐ medium · 2026-08-12ai-literacy, critical-thinking, higher-ed, teacher-role, curriculum-design, equity, ethics

Synthesis: Based on expert interviews and a survey of 141 university students in Communication and Education programs, this study finds that while technology offers real opportunities for teaching and learning, its inclusion in the curriculum is limited and often superficial. Teachers are under-trained to manage tools that produce disinformation, deepfakes, and fake news, which hinders students' critical thinking. The authors argue for critical media literacy that lets students question and evaluate content within an ethical, reflective framework.

Key Findings

1. Superficial curriculum integration. Recent technological advances (including generative content and deepfakes) create challenges for information consumption, yet their inclusion in educational curricula is limited and often shallow.

2. Teacher training gap. Teachers are inadequately trained to manage these tools effectively, which directly hinders the development of students' Critical Thinking.

3. Critical media literacy as the remedy. Students and experts agree the goal should be a critical media literacy that goes beyond tool use to help learners question and evaluate the content they consume, within an ethical and reflective framework that promotes participatory and critical citizenship.

Implications

For AI Literacy and Teacher Role development, the paper underscores that literacy in AI-mediated information environments is not simply technical competence with tools — it is the capacity to evaluate provenance, spot manipulation, and reason about credibility. This has direct implications for Curriculum Design and for Faculty Development in Higher Ed and K-12 alike.

The findings connect to Ethics and Equity In AI Education debates: if teachers cannot manage disinformation and deepfakes, students who are already exposed to these risks are underserved. It argues for an ethical, reflective, and participatory orientation to media education rather than a purely instrumental one.

Connected Concepts

  • AI Literacy
  • Critical Thinking
  • Higher Ed
  • Equity In AI Education
  • Teacher Role
  • Curriculum Design
  • Ethics
  • Educational Policy AI

    • Connected Articles

  • AI Ethics Education Public Discourse — AI ethics in public discourse
  • AI Education Global Capacity — Global capacity for AI education
  • AI Changing Teaching Workflows — How AI changes teaching workflows
  • AI Adult Learning Design — AI in adult learning design
  • Elementary Writing GenAI Systematic Review 2026 — Elementary writing and GenAI review

    • Citation

    Santos-Albardía, M., Peña-Fernández, S., & Agirreazkuenaga, I. (2025). Technology, education and critical media literacy: potential, challenges, and opportunities. Frontiers in Human Dynamics, 7, 1608911.