Abstract
The process of education in the 21st century takes place in a highly developed digital world. This triggers the need of students` becoming media literate, considering that media has an important influence on students` shaping perceptions of the world, beliefs, emotions, values, behaviour and attitudes, At the same time, it presupposes, on the one hand, a re-thinking of teaching objectives, teaching techniques, teacher and student roles in the classroom and, on the other hand, the necessity of developing in students a set of skills that help them learn how to get access to new information resources, find what they need to know and prove understanding of information and internalization of knowledge through their own products. The aim of this paper is to offer an empirical investigation on the topic under discussion, showing the relationship between media literacy and critical thinking. It also provides insights into the teachers` strategies, techniques and activities that might be used in the classroom, so that they could provide students with the skills they need – in order to cope with the challenges brought by the digital world – more exactly, with critical thinking skills. Findings from specialized literature are corroborated with own contributions.
Keywords: Creative thinking; critical thinking; lifelong learning; media education; media literacy