'To trust or not to trust,…'-pupils' ways of judging information encountered in a socio-scientific issue

Abstract

This article reports from a qualitative study of how 16-year-old Norwegian pupils dealt with a socioscientific issue. The pupils were interviewed on aspects of their decision-making concerning a local version of the well-known controversial issue: whether or not power transmission lines increase the risk for childhood leukaemia. The part of the study reported here has focused on their views on the trustworthiness of knowledge claims, arguments and opinions given to them prior to interview. It was found that many aspects of trustworthiness were experienced as problematic by the pupils. Using inductive analysis, four main kinds of 'resolution strategies' were identified that were used by the pupils to decide who and what to trust: 1) Acceptance of knowledge claim, 2) Evaluation of statements using 'reliability indicators' and through explicitly 'thinking for themselves', 3) Acceptance of researchers or other sources of information as authoritative, 4) Evaluation of sources of information in terms of 'interests', 'neutrality' or 'competence'. Some pupils used all these strategies, others used only one or two. The pupils' evaluations were nuanced and based partly on empirical evidence, but mostly on rather superficial contextual information. It is argued that some of the resolution strategies imply that autonomous evaluations were made. One main conclusion is that knowledge of different sources of scientific information needs to be more emphasized in science education for citizenship.