Strengthening initial teacher education students’ evidentiary practices in scientific reasoning — Towards the development of principles of task design

The capacity to critically evaluate scientific claims is becoming an increasingly important skill in an era in which both mis- and disinformation are increasingly prevalent. Mis- and disinformation are unparalleled in their reach as they appear on a range of platforms, including social media, online forums, news websites and blogs, as well as search engines and online advertising. There is therefore an urgent need to strengthen citizens’ capabilities for evidence-based evaluation of claims in information disseminated in public forums. In this context, science education is uniquely positioned to develop learners’ evidence-based critical thinking, due to its focus on data, analysis, interpretation and subsequent responses. In this chapter, we present the research design of a project that aims to develop and assess initial teacher education (ITE) students’ capabilities to apply scientific reasoning when evaluating evidence in public communications—their evidentiary practices (EPs). Central to our research, and informed by preliminary results from a pilot study, we designed five intervention tasks, which integrate evidentiary practices into science instruction and are implemented in an online asynchronous primary science education course.