Science Media Literacy – an Intervention Study

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Dietmar Höttecke; Professorin Dr. Sandra Sprenger
• Subject Area: General and Domain-Specific Teaching and Learning
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 518271472

Students should be able to evaluate complex scientific issues (socio-scientific issues such as measures against climate change) in an informed and well-founded manner. On the other hand, media landscapes are currently undergoing major changes: The gatekeeper role of traditional media is being marginalized by the growing importance of the Internet and social media. The latter contribute to a sometimes rapid spread of false and distorted information about science. Indeed, it is questionable whether the teaching of scholastic expertise is sufficient for misrepresentations and distortions of science in social media to be adequately judged, i.e., for plausibility judgments to be formed. Such judgments already require a high level of subject matter expertise. Alternatively, the ability to make confidence judgments could be beneficial. Confidence judgments are based on knowledge about "social rules of the game" according to which scientific validity claims are established and thus about the social dimension of "Nature of Science" (e.g., role of epistemic dependence, criticism, control, disciplinary order, and notion of expertise). This project uses an exploratory intervention study design to investigate how to prepare secondary school students in the disciplinary context of anthropogenic climate change to take on parts of the gatekeeper role of the media themselves. For this purpose, two support formats are designed from a physics and geography didactic perspective and longitudinally investigated with regard to their learning effects in contrast to a control group. Both formats should enable students in the exemplary context of anthropogenic climate change to deal with distorting or false media representations of science, especially in social media. One support format is oriented toward the more traditional teaching of specialized knowledge and is intended to enable plausibility judgments. The other is oriented to the Science Media Literacy (SML) framework, in particular to the ability to ground confidence judgments in science media representations. The project includes a developmental and an intervention study. In the development study, the two treatments and test items are developed or adapted and tested. The test items are designed as performance tasks and should in principle be able to be processed via plausibility and confidence strategies. Test subjects are presented with examples from social media, which they assess e.g. trustworthiness. The parallelized sample design includes 400 students in grades 8-11. The dependent variables represent ideas about climate change and the ability to make and substantiate trust judgments. The goal of the project is to formulate evidence-based and robust support recommendations for future climate change education.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants