Promoting Pre-service Physics Teachers’ Science Media Literacy

Abstract

The Science Media Literacy (SML) framework aims to prepare students for the rapidly changing mediascape, where the task of gatekeeping is increasingly transferred to consumers. In this explorative study we reconstructed pre-service physics teachers’ ideas of the communication of science in society and the strategies they apply when examining a scientific claim made in social media. Furthermore, we investigated to what extent SML could be promoted during an intervention. Results indicate that initially held ideas had been challenged and their strategies for dealing with a scientific claim in public were shifting from epistemic to sociological.