Topics such as climate change, global warming and vaccines have dominated conversations and debates in the media but not in classrooms. While 74% of teachers believe this type of science content should be taught in schools, only are teaching it, leaving room for unreliable sources of scientific information to flourish. Doug Lombardi, professor and associate dean of faculty affairs and graduate studies, believes educators have a responsibility to address science denial and disinformation directly. In his latest article 鈥溾, he encourages teachers to mitigate the information students are most likely receiving from unreliable sources such as social media. For this issue of Office Hours, he details four strategies for teachers to manage science denial and disinformation in the classroom.
1. Respond by providing reliable sources.
While misinformation may not have the same cruel intentions, it can be equally as harmful as disinformation, which is spread intentionally. Lombardi believes the classroom is the best place to teach students how to protect themselves against false information. When encountering misinformation or disinformation in the classroom, he suggests teachers share refutation texts with students that can address inaccurate information by directly naming inaccuracies and providing new and reliable information. It may be necessary to provide multiple refutation texts as information evolves. This builds knowledge of the nature of science in students: that science is tentative, and multiple refutation texts can help show the progression of scientific understanding of a topic. By providing reliable sources, educators teach students what a reliable source looks like and how proper scientific claims are developed.
2. Ensure topics are socially relevant and meaningful.
Lombardi鈥檚 research found that when individuals perceive a topic to be personally relevant, they are more motivated to engage critically with information on that topic. For teachers, this means that incorporating topics that directly impact students鈥 lives, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, vaccines and climate change, increase the likelihood that students will consider information on those topics carefully and engage in scientific thinking. Harnessing the curiosity of students and the timeliness of socially relevant topics is a powerful strategy for addressing disinformation, misinformation and science denial due to its ability to open discourse that interests students.
3. Evaluate how power and privilege influence information.
Educating students on why scientific information is produced empowers them to understand the motivations for sharing the information. Lombardi notes that finances often determine what information is produced. This is not inherently dangerous until there are 鈥減urveyors of disinformation鈥 involved. 鈥淭hey use our natural biases, our fears, our emotions, to spread information that's not truthful or trustworthy,鈥 says Lombardi. 鈥淭hey do this to gain power, and they do this to gain privilege. They do this to exclude others.鈥 In the scientific community, peer review is a check and balance on these nefarious actors; peer review makes it more difficult for an individual to gain power, privilege or influence through information that鈥檚 designed to appeal to our natural biases, fears or base emotions, rather than information that upholds accuracy and truth. Information to which students have a strong emotional response is likely to have been developed for nefarious intent (generating an emotional response to get more likes/views/clicks/influence) rather than for the purpose of producing accurate scientific information, through the scientific process. Educators must teach students to be extra critical of information that generates an immediate emotional response (e.g., excitement or anger). Being self-reflective when presented with inflammatory scientific claims will slow the rush to judgement.
4. Provide explicit instruction on how to evaluate information.
Information literacy skills are applicable across disciplines and can apply directly to science mis- and disinformation. Lombardi鈥檚 article shares two key steps for determining credibility of a source: assessing any conflicts of interest and determining the expertise of the author and analyzing any limitations of scientific consensus. These steps allow students to evaluate whether a source is trustworthy. If students can identify who benefits from this information being shared, they can determine if the source may lead to financial gain or popularity. Lombardi credits Assistant Professor Sarah McGrew and her work on lateral reading as an effective strategy for young science learners to decipher the expertise and trustworthiness of the author. The final step of lateral reading encourages students to question the motivations of the author and look into their background, which provides information on the author's knowledge.
Although scientific consensus is the goal, students should be able to determine what facts or information is missing when evaluating claims for truthfulness. 鈥淚n science, no claim is ever proven to be factual. We always have to leave a scientific claim open or to be what they call falsified or just to be disproven,鈥 says Lombardi. 鈥淭he idea is to help students be skeptical but not cynical,鈥 says Lombardi. 鈥淲e want [students] to develop that curious, open-minded mindset but not [be] easily manipulated.鈥 But doing so can be complex; Lombardi鈥檚 team has developed a number of freely available and classroom tested instructional tools that help students evaluate competing claims to help determine which is the more scientifically truthful.
If you want to address science denial and disinformation in your classroom, download these for your students.