Half of year eight students trust adults more than the internet for information, while around one-third would accept content as true if it was repeated by multiple online sources, new Australian Catholic University research shows.
The research also found just 15 per cent of students have appropriate strategies and criteria to help them evaluate credible sources of digital information.
Associate Professor Laura Scholes, of the Institute for Learning Sciences and Teacher Education, said the research showed teachers needed urgent professional development to help students critically evaluate online content as learners in the digital age, and counter mistrust and misconceptions.
Identifying misinformation matters
“The idea of universal truths has been replaced with many truths, many knowledges, and many forms of reason. This requires sophisticated literacies to navigate potentially conflicting, controversial sources laden with disinformation or misinformation,” she said.
“Young people urgently need to be supported in classrooms to develop evaluative reading skills. As educators we need to equip students with skills to investigate topical issues and make informed decisions they can justify.”
In the study, published in the British Educational Research Journal, 45 students at two schools were given a scenario requiring them to explore the health risks associated with mobile phone usage, which allowed the researchers to then investigate student approaches to sourcing online information.
Associate Professor Scholes said she was surprised to find 53 per cent of students expressed mistrust of the internet and preferred to confer with sources including parents, other adults, and scientists, without an understanding that personal and professional beliefs could be contested.
“Young people spend so much time online that we assumed they had higher proficiencies when it came to evaluating the information they are constantly bombarded with from competing sources. This mistrust may be caused by students’ lack of confidence in evaluating sources, lack of experience and lack of skill,” she said.
“Accepting the beliefs of others as true, without any evaluation, can be dangerous for students as they may fall for misinformation or even disinformation. To be informed citizens and critical learners, students need to understand that personal beliefs and experiences are highly subjective.”
Trusted sources
Associate Professor Scholes said the research she led, which involved Dr Sarah McDonald and Professor Barbara Comber, of UniSA, and Associate Professor Garth Stahl, of UQ, also found 31 per cent of students believed online information if there was consensus across sources.
“Relying on consensus to establish reliability is fraught in the age of the internet. Algorithms feed viewers more of what they viewed so that consensus may be quickly established but based on biased or unreliable information,” she said.
Associate Professor Scholes said new modes of communication required new literacies to help students interact with search engines, hyperlinked webpages, popups, alerts, notifications, and links, and understand how to evaluate the credibility of sources of information.
“New pedagogical approaches in literacy classrooms are urgent now as the flow of conflicting information about issues such as health and other socio-scientific issues highlights the need to emphasise evaluating and justifying evidence across the curriculum,” she said.
