Ernest Morrell, TC’s Macy Professor of English Education and Director of the College’s Institute for Urban and Minority Education (IUME), has received Choice Magazine’s 2014 Outstanding Academic Title Award for his book Critical Media Pedagogy: Teaching for Achievement in City Schools (Teachers College Press).

With his coauthors, Rudy Duenas, Veronica Garcia and Jorge Lopez, Morrell argues in Critical Media Pedagogy that critical media education can improve the academic literacy achievement of under-served youth and provide them with access to 21st-century learning technologies. Critical Media Pedagogy presents first-hand accounts of teachers who are successfully incorporating critical media education into standards-based lessons and units. It also offers concrete examples of how to develop a rigorous, standards-based content area curriculum that embraces new media practices and features media production.  

Morrell is known for his research and teaching in the fields of literacy, critical pedagogy, cultural studies, urban education and ethnic studies. He has served as President of the 40,000-member National Council of Teachers of English and in 2014 was named a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association (AERA).  His books include Critical Literacy and Urban Youth (2007); The Art of Critical Pedagogy: Possibilities for Moving from Theory to Practice in Urban Schools (2008, with John C. Andrade); and Becoming Critical Researchers: Literacy and Empowerment for Urban Youth (Counterpoints: Studies in the Postmodern Theory of Education) (2013).

Choice Magazine is a publication of the American Library Association.

Published Monday, Feb. 9, 2015