The focus module deepens the digital media and information literacies needed to recognise and shape how information on socio-scientific issues is encountered and accessed, to critically scrutinise a single information item before relying on it, and to see a socio-scientific issue from the perspectives of its different stakeholders. Participants explore how search engines, social media feeds, and algorithms shape what they and their students see, practise strategies for evaluating sources, analyse fallacious argumentation, manipulation strategies, and deceptive tactics in authentic and fictional media examples, identify the stakeholders behind a socio-scientific issue and the perspectives missing from the debate, and reflect on how to promote these literacies in their own teaching.
\nTogether with the core modules, the focus module serves the aim Teaching for Meta-Scientific Literacies and adds the learning outcomes of the BIT variant (→ Aims & Learning Outcomes: SciLMi Digital Media and Information Literacies for Effective Democratic Citizens).
| Activity | \nWorking setting | \nRequires | \nRequired for | \n
|---|---|---|---|
| Mirror, Mirror on the Media Wall | \nPlenary | \n– | \n– | \n
| Challenges & Opportunities | \nPlenary, then SSI teams, then plenary | \n– | \n– | \n
| What You See Is All There Is? | \nPairs, then pop-up teams, then plenary | \n→ SciLMi Puzzle | \n– | \n
| What's the Catch? | \nPop-up teams, then plenary, then individual | \n→ SciLMi Puzzle | \n– | \n
| Convincing or Well-Founded? | \nSSI teams, then plenary | \n→ SciLMi Puzzle | \n→ Close to Home | \n
| Close to Home | \nSSI teams | \n→ Convincing or Well-Founded? | \n→ Mind-Mapping SSI (2) | \n
Participants get up or stay seated to signal agreement or disagreement with statements about their own and their students' media use, for example:
\nStarting from their own and their students' media use, participants see why digital media and information literacies concern every subject and every teacher.
This activity can be done in a virtual setting; participants then switch their camera on and off to respond to the statements.
In a plenary discussion, participants work out how technological innovations, from the World Wide Web and search engines to social media, smartphones, and AI, have changed how information is accessed and shared: users have turned from passive consumers into active producers, unedited content stands alongside fact-checked content, and information spreads faster than it can be fact-checked.
\nThe trainers remind participants of the controversies during the COVID-19 pandemic, and participants discuss the consequences for democratic culture.
\nThe trainers introduce terms such as social bot, information pollution, and echo chamber, and participants discuss them.
\nFinally, in their SSI teams, participants collect the challenges and opportunities they face in their teaching in the (mis)information age, write them on index cards, and present them to the other teams as they pin them to the board.
\nParticipants see how the information environment of their students has changed and relate it to their own teaching. The trainers can also form pop-up teams (→ SciLMi Modules: Working Settings).
In a virtual setting, the teams can use → EasyRetro instead of index cards.
A short survey collects the participants' most common information sources. Participants who are happy to do so then open their own social media feed and compare the first three posts or videos with a peer:
\nIn pop-up teams, participants then explore one search engine each, for example Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Ecosia, Startpage, or Yandex, with the same two search terms, such as "climate migration" and "vaccine safety". They analyse which results are shown first, how the results are presented, for example as ads, featured snippets, videos, or news, and how the engine guides their attention. Each team shares its key findings in one to two minutes, and the plenary discusses how learners might be affected by these mechanisms.
\nFinally, participants identify the HOWs in the SciLMi Model that teachers can promote with the activity.
\nThe comparison shows that algorithms act as gatekeepers that personalise what users see and can create filter bubbles, and that different search engines and keywords lead to different results. Learners therefore need to actively search for information from diverse sources and be aware of how the layout and ranking of search results influence their attention.
Make sure that participants can take part without sharing anything personal.
In pop-up teams, participants examine six authentic examples: a website, a chart, a video, an image, a product label, and a statistic. For each example, they work out whether there is a catch and, if so, where it lies: in the source, the content, the presentation, or the numbers. To check the sources, they use lateral reading.
\nThey then search the SciLMi Model for the HOW that helps learners detect the catch, using the Glossary for support when needed. In plenary, the teams compare their results, and the trainers clarify open questions.
\nFinally, participants individually look for further examples for their own teaching on fact-checking websites such as blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Snopes or blank\" rel=\"noopener\">EDMO.
\nParticipants see that a catch can lie in the source, the content, the presentation, or the numbers, and that lateral reading reveals it faster than close reading of the item itself.
Introduce the Glossary first. Participants can comment on entries they find unclear or missing.
The materials are linked rather than reproduced, as they are protected by copyright. Show them with reference to the source, and show only the original material: some of the linked articles reveal the catch.
A short input introduces the parts of an argument: claim, reason, evidence, and warrant (Booth et al. 2016). In their SSI teams, participants then analyse two fictional opinion pieces on a car-free town centre, one arguing for and one against, together with a fact box on the proposal. They first mark the claims, then the reasons, and then the evidence, each in a different colour.
\nIn a table, the teams then collect the fallacious argumentation, manipulation strategies, and deceptive tactics they identify and assign them to the corresponding HOWs. In plenary, the teams compare their results and discuss why the more convincing text is not necessarily the better-founded one.
\nParticipants experience that an argument can be convincing without being well-founded, and that both sides of a debate can use sound arguments as well as fallacious argumentation, manipulation strategies, and deceptive tactics. The trainers can also form pop-up teams (→ SciLMi Modules: Working Settings).
The Glossary entry Argumentation provides the parts of an argument with guiding questions and a worked example in which the warrant is made explicit.
To deepen the activity, participants identify the warrants behind the arguments and assess whether they can be accepted.
A car-free town centre may not be the most original topic, but it was chosen deliberately: all teachers can relate to it, it can be discussed in a foreign language, and teachers of non-STEM subjects, who sometimes hesitate to engage with socio-scientific issues, can contribute without reservation.
The town of Elderford and its residents, organisations, and businesses are fictional. The texts deliberately contain fallacious argumentation, manipulation strategies, and deceptive tactics.
The Elderford town council is discussing a proposal to make the historic town centre (about 1 km²) car-free by the end of next year.
\nNewsletter of the Elderford Retailers' Association
\nThe council's war on drivers has reached a new level: it now wants everyone in Elderford to give up their car. If this plan goes ahead, our lively centre will turn into a ghost town.
\nShops in the centre depend on customers who come by car. In our survey of members, 38 of 52 shop owners said that most of their customers arrive by car. On the first car-free Saturday, the Sunshine bakery took 30% less than usual.
\nOur town is not only for the young and fit. My mother is 82 and walks with a walker. She cannot carry her shopping to a bus stop, and the car is the only way she can still do it on her own. Being able to move freely is a basic right, and it must not depend on a council decision.
\nTraffic expert Dr Keith Barker* agrees: "A car ban is the end of every small town."
\nEveryone we talk to is against the ban. And let's be honest: today it's the centre, tomorrow cars will be banned from the whole of Elderford.
\nSay no to the ban – keep Elderford moving!
\n* Dr Keith Barker is managing director of Barker Motors, Elderford.
\nBlog of the climate group Elderford Breathes
\nDo we really want our children to breathe dirty air every day? Do we really want our town centre to remain a car park?
\nA car-free centre will make our air cleaner, because road traffic is the main source of nitrogen dioxide in the centre. Last year, the monitoring station on Market Square measured an annual mean of 46 micrograms per cubic metre, above the EU limit value.
\nAnd the ban works: since the car-free Saturdays started, fewer children in Elderford have been treated for asthma. Even the World Health Organization says that cars must be banned from city centres.
\nStreets belong to people, not to cars. Our town centre should be a place where children can play and neighbours can meet.
\nThe choice is simple: either we ban cars now, or our children will grow up choking on exhaust fumes. The only people who oppose the plan are selfish SUV drivers who cannot imagine walking a few hundred metres.
\nSupport the car-free centre – let Elderford breathe!
\nReturning to Elderford, participants identify in their SSI teams who is affected by the proposal for a car-free town centre. Starting from the groups the two texts speak for, such as retailers, older people, and children, they note the interests and values of each group and discuss which perspectives are missing from both texts.
\nThe teams then discuss whether there is a current issue near their schools that their students are aware of and that affects them, for example traffic on the way to school, heat in the classrooms, or a planned wind farm. They explore how different subjects could take up the issue, what cross-subject collaboration could offer, and what difficulties it might involve.
\nParticipants see that a socio-scientific issue looks different from each stakeholder's perspective and that local issues offer authentic contexts for cross-subject teaching. The discussion feeds into the development of the SSI lesson sequence (→ Mind-Mapping SSI (2)).
References
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