Critical thinking in high school science education: a focus on Fake News and Climate Change.

In France, during the COVID—19 pandemic, I received many questions from my students while we were “at home”, like “I have read that, is it true?” or “I am aware because I have read that …”. This questioned me a lot, especially since they spend more than 7 hours a day on their phones and social media!

In response, for their last grade in French curriculum focusing on the theme of climate change, I decided to have an approach based on what they read on social media, to warn them not about what they read but more about “how could you know this information is true?”, “How could you trust what you are reading?” or “Why do we want to trust this information (which is eventually wrong)?”. As I am also a user of their social media, I felt it was a good way.

My approach is based on the book “La démocratie des crédules” and “Apocalypse cognitive” written by Gerald Bronner, a famous French sociologist. This book adresses misinformation and cognitive biases and has received awards such as the “Europe Social Sciences Award”. It explains for example that nowadays, fake news are more and more present because we don’t have enough motivation to fight fake news online, allowing misinformation and their consequences to spread.

The lessons begin with students analyzing recent and controversial news. Then they must raise cards indicating, for example, the need for verification or identifying logical errors. They have several cards in hands, and they need to choose the better ones according to the information I show them. This interactive process forms the basis for further discussions, linking the lessons to the overarching theme.

One of the projects also involves students creating a forward-looking climate report, and it needs to be futuristic (for example, as if they made it in 2050). I will show some videos they made thanks to QR-code in the poster. Linked to that, the course incorporates elements inspired by the movie “Don’t look up”, offering a perspective on the challenges the world must face in order to trust scientists or to be really warned by the climate change. It’s also interesting for them because my high school is renowned for offering an artistic curriculum.

The culmination of the course is a Fake News competition, testing students' ability to discern misinformation within the context of climate change. This project not only evaluates their critical thinking skills but also empowers them to actively combat the spread of false information.

To resume, the goal of this lesson is to equip students with the tools to critically evaluate information not only information related to climate change, but also future scientific information they will encounter (vaccination, DNA editing …).