Science Education in a Post-Truth World

Dear Colleagues,

We live in an increasingly complex world, also referred to as the ‘post-truth world’. There are often no simple answers to multidimensional questions, and the problems of the modern world are becoming increasingly complex. This is especially reflected in the media landscape, as nowadays everyone can spread information through social media and the number of users of social networks such as Instagram, TikTok and Facebook is increasing worldwide from year to year. The information in such media often has a scientific background but does not necessarily have to be disseminated by experts, which has fundamentally changed the way of communicating and reflecting on scientific content. Interventions for learning about science in the media slowly started to appear on the research agenda of the science education community a few years ago but are still rare. In addition, there are still many research gaps in the question of how students deal with science-related information in the media—what strategies do they use, how are they manipulated, what do they believe in? The perspective of teachers is also still unclear, and the question arises whether they are ready to address controversial and sometimes complex science-based issues.

This Special Issue aims to contribute to the literature by focusing on the above-mentioned questions.  It is open for contributions on classroom interventions focusing on critical scientific media literacy, studies on students’ perceptions as well as teachers’ views. In general, all papers are welcome that approach the problem of dealing with a post-truth world in science education.

Dr. Nadja Belova
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Education Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• media literacy
• misinformation
• post-truth world
• socio-scientific issues