Key professional organizations for science teachers “get it” about the importance of teaching students to resist misinformation, and about why science education should aim to achieve broader goals than only preparing students for college and careers. The fact that science teachers are on the front lines and hear from students every day is one reason why their professional associations understand students’ need to resist misinformation better than state boards of education and other education policymakers. Everyone knows that TikTok, Instagram, and other social media used by young people (and adults, too) often disseminate scientific misinformation. Science teachers can help mitigate the harm.

One constructive action is that The Science Teacher, a bimonthly publication of the National Science Teaching Association (NSTA), runs a regular column in every issue called Fact-or-Faux. These articles provide lessons and other resources teachers can use to help their students evaluate the quality of science-related information, including information they find online. The articles, which first appeared in the January 2024 issue, are available free of charge at https://shipseducation.net/misinfo/library.htm.

Also, all three of the NSTA K-12 teacher journals published articles about a database of more than 70 lessons and related resources to teach students about effectively evaluating information. That database was created by the nonprofit Media Literacy Now with financial support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The searchable database is available, free of charge, at https://medialiteracynow.org/impact/science/. It includes lessons for all K-12 grade levels.

In 2023, partly in response to the conference and papers reported in the preceding blog post, the National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT) published a Letter to the NABT Community encouraging teachers to include science media literacy in biology and life science classrooms. NABT’s journals, like the NSTA journals, have published multiple articles providing lessons and other resources related to finding trustworthy information and resisting misinformation. Interestingly, professional organizations “got it” early. As long ago as 2016 the National Science Teaching Association issued a Position Statement called Teaching Science in the Context of Societal and Personal Issues.

Today another article was published in Edutopia describing a lesson to help students distinguish between factual videos and fakes, such as those created by artificial intelligence. Sixth-grade science students were presented with four short, kid-friendly videos and asked to decide which one is factual. The lesson proved highly engaging.

Teaching about misinformation is not part of the NGSS or most states’ science education standards. And although science education standards sometimes claim to have broad goals, such as helping students apply science to societal and personal issues, in fact they focus almost entirely on preparing students for college and careers and largely ignore how science can be used in people’s everyday lives. No wonder NAEP reported that in 2024 only 39% of American eighth-graders reported they were interested in their science class.

Note: The entire blog can be downloaded as a single PDF file. See the link at the bottom of this page.