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http://dx.doi.org/10.14697/jkase.2021.41.1.59

Patterns of Student Evaluation on Media Information Regarding Socioscientific Issues  

Jo, Serin (Jangwi Middle School)
Ko, Yeonjoo (Ewha Womans University)
Lee, Hyunju (Ewha Womans University)
Publication Information
Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education / v.41, no.1, 2021 , pp. 59-70 More about this Journal
Abstract
Ability to make informed decisions by critically evaluating media information on socioscientific issues (SSI) is one of the crucial elements of scientific literacy that citizens should obtain. This study aims to investigate how middle school students evaluated media information about socioscientific issues (SSI) when they faced two different types of information (i.e., numerical and empathic information). To achieve the aim, 96 middle school students responded to the questionnaires asking them to evaluate reliability and persuasiveness of SSI media information. The questionnaires consisted of two sets of newspaper articles on each SSI (pro-numerical/empathic, against-numerical/empathic). After reading the articles, the students evaluated reliability and persuasiveness of each article and wrote the reasons for their evaluation. The results were as follows: First, the students believed that news articles with numerical information were more reliable than the ones with empathic information in all SSI contexts. They tended to trust scientific evidence and data from numerical information, and real cases, societal problems, expressions, and values from empathic information. In addition, they evaluated their reliability based on the logic of information, accuracy of information, breadth and depth of data, and quantity and quality of sources both numerical and empathic information. Second, in case of evaluating persuasiveness of the articles, they focused more on the values that information contained, richness and logicality of the information, rather than the types of information, regardless of the type of information.
Keywords
Socioscientific issues; Scientific literacy; Information evaluation; Information reliability; Information persuasiveness;
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