Tag Archives: scientific misinformation

A new article about reinventing science education standards

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The Journal of Research in Science Teaching published an excellent article in September called “Reinventing science standards to better support meaningful science learning.” This post discusses strengths of that paper and identifies missing pieces of what colleagues and I believe is needed to reinvent the standards, including revising standards to help students better evaluate information and thereby resist scientific misinformation (e.g., “vaccines cause autism”). The paper is open source, i.e., not behind a paywall, and is available HERE.

The authors, Jeffrey Nordine and David Fortus, make a well-reasoned, carefully documented, and comprehensive argument that current science education standards in many nations, notably the NGSS in the U.S., are poorly aligned with learning theory. In other words, the current standards are unlikely to motivate students to learn science. This is an argument that colleagues and I have been making, too, using different sources and rationales. As a reminder, NAEP recently reported that only 39% of American eighth-graders reported they were interested in their science class.

The fact that an independent analysis points to an identical conclusion to ours, namely that current science education standards lead to instruction that is failing to engage students, is noteworthy. The new article cites a wide variety of papers and reports related to learning theory to support their reasoning and conclusions. The comprehensive set of references, more than 100 in all, is a strength of the paper. To choose just one example of how the article presents clear arguments with supporting citations, the authors write:

“… when learners do not perceive a meaningful purpose (meaningful for them) in the tasks in which they are expected to engage, their motivation to engage with these tasks will decline, and they will be less likely to construct significant new knowledge (Ames 1992; Dweck 1986; Fortus and Touitou 2021).”

Another significant feature of the paper is its recommendation that science education standards should be organized “according to contemporary issues and contexts rather than disciplinary content ideas.” That conclusion echoes part of a recent post on this blog about Pennsylvania’s new science education standards (STEELS), which reads: “I am confident that there are creative ways for other states to incorporate ‘contexts’ into their standards, as Pennsylvania has done.” Nordine and Fortus’s conclusion is also similar to the call that NSTA made years ago in a Position Statement called Teaching Science in the Context of Societal and Personal Issues, which colleagues and I have often cited. Teaching science in contexts that are relevant to students’ current and future lives is engaging because it is meaningful to them.

I welcome Nordine and Fortus’s excellent paper, which is convincingly backed by prior research. However, there are three important ways in which the article falls short, in my opinion. Each of these perspectives provides an additional reason to reinvent science education standards, as well as rationales for the needed changes.

First, as colleagues and I have documented before, there is a misalignment between the admirable goals laid out in A Framework for K-12 Science Education and the NGSS standards that were supposedly based on the Framework. Teaching and learning science for citizenship is almost entirely missing from the standards—but it is succinctly summarized in three of the five goals identified on page 1 of the Framework. Those three goals for all students are: possess sufficient knowledge of science and engineering to engage in public discussions on related issues; become careful consumers of scientific and technological information related to their everyday lives; and, develop competencies to continue to learn science outside school. Together, these goals can be seen as an excellent definition of learning science for citizenship.

Nordine and Fortus seem to confuse understanding science in the way that scientists practice science (in other words, science as described in the NGSS standards) with using science as a citizen uses it. For example, scientists conduct research to understand climate change and use science to develop green energy sources, such as wind turbines. Citizens, on the other hand, do not need to know science in the way that scientists do in order to identify candidates who are concerned about climate change, or weigh the costs and benefits of purchasing an electric vehicle, or decide whether to install solar panels on their home. Furthermore, these decisions require knowledge of information outside the domain of science, whether to weigh benefits versus costs, or to consider the ethics of one decision or another. If learning science for citizenship is an important goal, science education needs to be reinvented to help young people learn about and practice making decisions in their everyday lives as citizens, including as future voters and consumers—decisions that involve science but that are not limited to the perspective of a scientist who is “doing” science.

That raises the second way the article falls short. We agree that the goal of reinvented science education standards should prioritize “students’ ‘informed agency’ over ‘competence,’” as the the paper’s abstract says. We seem to differ, however, about the meaning of ‘informed agency’ in the context of science education. Few students will become scientists or use science, as described in standards, in their jobs. Having some understanding of science in the way that the NGSS standards suggest is a worthy goal but the balance is wrong. Students also need ‘agency’ to make societal and personal decisions that use science but are not equivalent to doing science.

It is not enough to organize science education standards “according to contemporary issues and contexts” if what that means is studying the science behind drinking water purification, or the global greenhouse effect, or pandemic diseases like COVID-19, as the authors suggest. Again, that perspective has value, but only to a point. Reinvented science education standards should also be organized around decisions that ordinary citizens need to make. How should I decide whether to buy bottled water instead of using tap water (which may be contaminated)? What are the costs and benefits of a carbon tax or fee, and should I support one in my state? Is it true that vaccines contain dangerous substances and therefore I should avoid being vaccinated or having my child vaccinated?

Reinvented standards need to put a higher priority on making informed decisions that do not rely on “doing” science. Furthermore, CRISPR, artificial intelligence, robotics and other science-based technologies pose ethical questions that an educated citizenry needs to understand for democracy to function well—knowledge that is not the same as understanding in any detail the science behind these technologies.

That brings us to the third way the article falls short. This is an age of scientific misinformation that is having serious negative impacts, such as falling vaccination rates. We agree with Nordine and Fortus, and with the Framework, that learning how to continue learning science outside of school is critically important. To achieve that goal requires what has been called science media literacy. What is a “scientific consensus” and is this particular claim based on such a consensus? Who is behind a claim that I encounter? What do others say about that claim? Which people or organizations are qualified to make judgments about such a claim allegedly based on science? Who should I trust and why? Reinvented science education standards need to place a much higher priority than the NGSS on learning how to evaluate claims allegedly based on science, which students will encounter throughout their lives, including claims about diets, nutrition, mental health, and other topics we cannot predict and cannot yet teach. These are vital competencies in a science-based world.

In summary, the Nordine and Fortus paper is a valuable and much-needed contribution to the science education literature. Their major conclusion, which is that current science education standards promote instruction that does not align with learning theory, and that therefore fails to adequately engage a majority of students, is important and we believe it is correct. Reinventing science education standards along the lines they suggest, with the addition of the perspectives described above, would result in greater student engagement in K-12 science education and would contribute to an increasingly scientifically literate population, as more broadly defined than in the current standards.

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

A shout-out to science teacher professional organizations

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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.

Some important conferences and reports

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Since the last blog post, in June 2022, the Moore Foundation, an anonymous donor, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute have supported important work about science education standards and about scientific misinformation. We appreciate their commitment, as well as the work of dozens of teachers, state and local policymakers, media experts and others who attended two invitational conferences leading to papers and reports, and contributed their thinking.

A conference was held at Stanford University in February 2023 called “Reinventing Scientific Literacy for an Age of Misinformation: NGSS 2.0?” Several papers and a website were among the results. One paper is a short Policy Brief by Jonathan Osborne (Kamalachari Professor of Science Education emeritus at Stanford) and Andy Zucker called Current Science Education Standards: The Good, the Bad and the Missing. A more extended discussion of recommendations in the Policy Brief is a paper by Osborne, Zucker, and Pimentel called Where Next for Science Education Standards?  

Those two papers and a number of others related to science education in an age of misinformation are available, free of charge, at https://sciedandmisinfo.stanford.edu/resources.

Another outcome of the Stanford conference was that the Howard Hughes Medical Institute provided support for a conference held in July 2023 to help answer the question: What should students learn in
K-12 science classes to help them better evaluate scientific information and resist misinformation? The result of the work at the conference was a short paper called Learning to Find Trustworthy Scientific Information by Andy Zucker and Erin McNeill (then CEO of the nonprofit Media Literacy Now). That paper identifies four areas in which science teachers can and should help students become lifelong learners of trustworthy science and resist misinformation. These areas are:

  • learn to evaluate the credibility of sources of scientific information;
  • learn more about the scientific enterprise, such as the nature and importance of a “scientific consensus”;
  • apply media literacy competencies when searching for information; and,
  • become more aware of one’s own thinking and behavior.

The next post on this blog will identify some of the impressive steps that have been taken by science teacher professional organizations, including NSTA and NABT, that are well aligned with the reports. These steps are a thoughtful response to the science misinformation crisis.

An important report from Stanford

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Science Education in an Age of Misinformation is an important new report from Stanford University. We welcome this report, especially because the authors reached the same conclusion that we have, namely that national and state science education standards need to be revised in order to teach students to distinguish between real science and junk science. As the Stanford report notes, the cultural context is significantly different now than it was when the NGSS was developed and published, with misinformation playing a far greater and more harmful role than it once did.

Discussions leading to the report were led by Jonathan Osborne, an emeritus Professor of Science Education at Stanford, who was also the lead author. More than a dozen people contributed to the discussions and writing of the report, including Bruce Alberts, who currently holds the Chancellor’s Leadership Chair in Biochemistry and Biophysics for Science and Education at the University of California, San Francisco. Professor Alberts is a former President of the National Academy of Sciences and a former Editor-in-Chief of Science magazine. It seems significant to us that Alberts, a pillar of the science community, recognizes that current science education standards need attention.

To the best of our knowledge, the work of the Stanford group and our own work were entirely independent. Certainly, we were unaware of their existence until last month. Nonetheless, there are a great many similarities in our concerns and recommendations. Among the overlaps are these: recognizing that educating students about misinformation and judging the quality of sources is vital; helping students develop a better understanding of how scientists reach consensus; developing “competent outsiders” who can make use of science; the need for greater digital literacy; reducing emphasis on teaching science that few students will ever use; and changing other elements of the education system associated with standards, such as high-stakes assessments.

We are encouraged by publication of this report and hope that it stimulates further discussion and, eventually, action to revise and improve science education standards. Our previous post offered specific suggestions for how and why the NGSS should be improved.

Research on helping people resist misinformation

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Research about “what works” in education is surprisingly thin. So it is good news for teachers and policymakers that multiple studies demonstrate that various approaches to help people resist misinformation do just that; they work.

One example comes from the Stanford History Education Group (SHEG). You may remember that SHEG documented how poorly most high school students are able to distinguish between fake or misleading online news sites compared to accurate sites. In one summary (2016), Stanford researchers summed up students’ ability to reason about information on the internet in one word: “bleak.”

To address this problem, SHEG developed a set of Civic Reasoning Online curriculum materials. A recent evaluation involving more than 3,000 students showed that those who used the SHEG materials grew considerably more in their ability to evaluate online sources than a control group of students who did not use the materials. Education Week published an article about this study last month.

As we developed our free one-week unit for grades 6-12, Resisting Scientific Misinformation, we based the materials on a number of high-quality studies about helping people resist misinformation. For example, a 2017 study demonstrated that educating people about misleading argumentation techniques, such as are often used by advertisers and climate change skeptics, helps reduce the influence of those techniques. Another study found that if people know what a high percentage of climate scientists agree that human beings are the major cause of climate change they become better able to resist climate change misinformation. And we relied on other studies, too.

In short, there is good reason to believe that teachers can help students resist scientific and other types of misinformation. This goal is critically important at a time when social media spreads misinformation at an alarming rate.

We wish that authors of the Next Generation Science Standards had focused far greater attention on teaching students to be “careful consumers of scientific and technological information related to their everyday lives,” as urged in A Framework for K-12 Science Education, the template for the NGSS. Misinformation of all kinds, notably including scientific misinformation, has become a far more serious problem since that Framework was published in 2012.

There are somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 teachers of science in grades 6-12 in the United States. By anyone’s reckoning, only a tiny fraction of them now focus on teaching students how to distinguish between science fact and science fiction. That is a shame. If national or state science education standards emphasized the importance of teaching students how to judge the quality of information they encounter, a far larger number of teachers would focus on this important topic.

Resisting scientific misinformation

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A year ago we posted a free, one-week curriculum unit for grades 6-12 called Resisting Scientific Misinformation. To date there have been over 3,000 downloads. Last week The Science Teacher published an open-access article about our materials, which we hope will result in additional attention to and use of the materials.

Helping students resist scientific misinformation is one of the important missing pieces in the NGSS. As we developed the curriculum materials, this missing piece became an impetus to look for other missing pieces and to write the white paper posted on this site.

It was interesting to learn recently that accepting misinformation is a bigger problem in the United States than in many other nations. As a Boston Globe article reported:

“Nearly 10 percent of the online stories followed most closely by readers in the United States in December came from [untrustworthy news] sites…. Enthusiasm for these sites in the United States far outstrips that of [France, Italy, Germany, and the United Kingdom]. The British are especially resistant; news from unreliable sites made up just 1.2 percent of the most-followed stories among British Web surfers.”

As you might expect, there are a variety of ways to help students with the problem of misinformation; unfortunately, none of them are addressed directly by the NGSS. One approach is to use technology-rich services that help users separate information from misinformation. For example, one can install software from NewsGuard, a startup that evaluates the trustworthiness of Internet news sites, including whether the news site identifies its owners, backers, and authors of articles. A green check mark appears for users who install the software in their web browsers.

Snopes is an easy-to-use website that has evaluated thousands of claims for accuracy, which includes a list of the “hot 50” rumors circulating online. Checkology describes itself as “a browser-based platform where middle school and high school students learn how to navigate today’s challenging information landscape by developing news literacy skills,” and it includes lessons educators can use with classes. A basic version is free, while a premium version requires a subscription.

This list of technology-rich resources to help users sort information from misinformation could be greatly expanded. We use some of them and we’re glad they exist.

At the same time, students need to learn how to judge for themselves the thousands of dubious science-related claims that appear on social media, on TV or radio, or elsewhere. New claims appear all the time. Using our unit (free online), teachers guide students through evaluating for themselves a number of “scientific” claims, some of which turn out to be valid, and others not. The materials focus on four approaches to evaluating claims: a better understanding of advertising, including ways some advertisers try to fool you; asking the right questions about a dubious claim; understanding more clearly how scientists reach their conclusions (including the vital role of such institutions as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention); and distinguishing between more and less reliable sources of scientific information.

The unit concludes by asking students to investigate a dubious claim by using appropriate websites, and then writing a short synthesis of their findings. Again, we find the NGSS is lacking in asking students to investigate claims for themselves, even such timely issues as the risks and benefits of teenage vaping.