Education Commons^™

Exploring Adolescents’ Critical Thinking Aptitudes When Reading About Science In The News, Marianne Bissonnette, Pierre Chastenay, Chantal Francoeur

Journal of Media Literacy Education

This research studies the critical thinking skills of six teenagers in their final years of high school. It looks at the way those students use a set of cognitive skills in order to analyze scientific and pseudoscientific information available in online news articles. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with six students chosen according to their results in a questionnaire about interest in science topics. Results show a large gap between participants’ use of critical thinking skills. Most of these skills were mainly used for text comprehension, evoking general knowledge, numeracy, arguments assessment and production, and life skills (open-mindedness and metacognition). The …

Information Literacy In A Post-Truth Era, Catherine Baird, Jonathan Howell

Sprague Library Scholarship and Creative Works

The founders of American democracy believed it could not survive without an “informed citizenry”. What does an informed citizenry look like in today’s world? And what role do we have as educators and students to support it?

First, we look at the significant challenges to institutional and media legitimacy that emerged in the second half of the 20th century, which rightfully called attention to the ways longstanding Western knowledge practices excluded marginalized communities and silenced important histories. We ask about the status of norms and mores in the aftermath of this challenge, in an era often called “post-truth.”

Second, we …