Developing adolescents’ reading literacy through the integration of media education and critical thinking instruction in cross-disciplinary modules

Abstract

The article presents the results of a quasi-experimental study on the effectiveness of integrating media literacy education and critical thinking training into cross-disciplinary modules to foster students' reading literacy. The goal was to develop and pilot a model ensuring statistically significant gains in the cognitive, evaluative, and behavioral components of contemporary reading in digital environments. A total of 254 students from several universities were surveyed (experimental group, n=126; control group, n=128), matched on baseline indicators (adapted PISA, p больше 0.05). The experimental group's program comprised six modules that integrated humanities course content with media text analysis, fact-checking, and argumentation practice, whereas the control group followed the standard curriculum. Assessment involved pre- and post-testing (PISA-like tasks, identification of manipulative content), behavioral observation during source verification tasks, and a final cross-disciplinary project. Independent and paired t-tests, along with Pearson correlations (alpha=0.05), were applied. The experimental group exhibited pronounced gains in recognizing manipulations: disinformation detection improved from 21.4% to 78.9%, hidden advertising from 33.8% to 81.2%, and clickbait from 45.2% to 92.6%, while changes in the control group were minimal. Fact-checking behavioral strategies in the experimental group shifted qualitatively: average number of sources verified per task increased from 0.87 to 3.45, use of primary sources from 11.5% to 64.8%, and verification time from 25.6 to 148.2 seconds, whereas shifts in the control group were statistically insignificant. A strong correlation was found between verification depth and evaluation accuracy (r около 0.78). The final project confirmed a cumulative effect: average score of 82.14 versus 51.67 in the control group (p меньше 0.001), with an intertextual integration coefficient of 2.18 versus 0.65, reflecting the developed ability to synthesize data from heterogeneous sources. The discussion demonstrates that the systematic integration of media literacy and critical thinking transforms disparate skills into a meta-subject competence and alters reading behavior, shifting learners from impulsive consumption to evidence-based, reflective information processing. The model is recommended for scaling, conditional on methodological support and teacher professional development.