Is That Plausible?

Specifically, when evaluating the connections between sources of information and knowledge claims, it is important for students to reconsider the plausibility of competing claims. [...]as students work through the six steps, they are prompted to ask "Is it plausible?" when evaluating competing claims. Using this strategy, students are likely to come across information that fits into one of the following categories: misinformation, disinformation, or malinformation (see Table 2). [...]perhaps a student reads an article that falsely claims only women can contract the human papillomavirus (HPV) and states that the virus causes cervical cancer as evidence for this claim. To do this, students should check the source by asking the following questions: * Who wrote the article and where did the information first appear online? * Is the person who wrote it an expert, or did the author draw the information from expert sources? * Did the information appear on a reputable outlet? * Does the author have a financial or political motivation for making the claim that could compromise their objectivity?

Socio-Scientific Learning During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Comparing In-person and Virtual Science Learning Using Model-Evidence Link Diagrams.

Science learning is an important part of the K-12 educational experience, as well as in the lives of students. This study considered students' science learning as they engaged in the instruction of scientific issues with social relevance. With classroom environments radically changing during the COVID-19 pandemic, our study adapted to teachers and students as they were forced to change from more traditional, in-person instructional settings to virtual, online instruction settings. In the present study, we considered science learning during a scaffold-facilitated process, where secondary students evaluated the connections between lines of scientific evidence and alternative explanations about fossil fuels and climate change and gauged the plausibility of each explanation. Our investigation focused on the relations between students' levels of evaluations, shifts in plausibility judgments, and knowledge gains, and examined whether there were differences in these relations between in-person classroom settings and virtual classroom settings. The results revealed that the indirect relational pathway linking higher levels of evaluation, plausibility shifts toward a more scientific stance, and greater knowledge gains was meaningful and more robust than the direct relational pathway linking higher levels of evaluation to greater knowledge gains. The results also showed no meaningful difference between the two instructional settings, suggesting the potential adaptiveness and effectiveness of properly-designed, scaffolded science instruction. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10956-023-10046-z.