When Science and Information Literacy Meet: An Approach to Exploring the Sources of Science News with Non-Science Majors

Abstract

The skill set associated with lifelong scientific literacy often includes the ability to decode the content and accuracy of scientific research as presented in the media. However, students often find decoding science in the media difficult, due to limited content knowledge and shifting definitions of accuracy. Faculty have developed a variety of approaches to increasing scientific literacy, but these approaches often miss out on valuable opportunities to teach core information literacy skills, including accessing original scientific research. We describe a scaffolded assignment using news reports that allows students enrolled in a science course for non-majors to learn about the nature of the scientific research literature, the connection between the popular press and the scientific literature, and the accuracy of popular media reporting of science while developing important information literacy skills. Our experience suggests that students develop information literacy skills associated with finding scientific articles using media reports, actively engage in trying to decode scientific articles, and are willing to thoughtfully assess the accuracy of science reporting in the news despite minimal content training. Moreover, students anecdotally report that the skills developed here are portable to decoding media reports from other academic fields of research, especially the social sciences.

Keywords:

• science literacy
• information literacy
• science and the media
• reading scientific papers

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors wish to thank Nancy Nekvasil and Ula Gaha for thoughtful comments on earlier versions of this paper.