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Understanding and Promoting Upper-Secondary School Students' Critical Reading and Learning in the 21st Century Information Society (completed)

A major 21st century educational goal is developing students' critical reading and learning, which include critical source evaluation skills. This project addresses this broad educational issue by providing new understanding of factors that affect how such skills develop and their importance to learning processes and learning outcomes.

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About the project

A major 21st century educational goal is developing students' critical reading and learning, which include critical source evaluation skills. Source evaluation refers to judgments about the trustworthiness of sources of information based on strategic attention to source features, such as the author or publisher. While source evaluation seems essential for critical reading and learning, many researchers and practitioners are concerned that students' source evaluation skills do not meet the challenges of the new information literacy landscape, especially when they read about ill-structured problems in the form of controversial social-scientific issues. Our project addresses this broad educational issue by providing new understanding of factors that affect how such skills develop and their importance to learning processes and learning outcomes.

By designing an intervention to promote students' source evaluation, it will also generate guidelines for essential pedagogical innovations. Specifically, we address the following questions:

  • First, how are individual and textual factors involved in students' source evaluation when reading about a controversial social-scientific issue?
  • Second, to what extent do students use and distinguish between the relevance of content information and the trustworthiness of sources as bases for judging the usefulness of textual resources?
  • Third, how can students' acquisition and application of more sophisticated source evaluation strategies be effectively and efficiently promoted?

Participants will be Norwegian upper-secondary school students. For expert comparison, a sample of librarians and journalists will also be included in studies addressing question one, and for cross-cultural comparison, a sample of New Zealand upper-secondary school students will be included in studies addressing question two. The intervention designed to address question three will also involve professional development for participating teachers.

Funding

Funded by The Norwegian Research Council`s FINNUT program (Research and Innovation in the Educational Sector)

 

Publications

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Published Mar. 25, 2015 12:48 PM - Last modified Nov. 27, 2023 11:19 AM

Contact

Participants

Detailed list of participants