Trust in science, misinformation, and science education: where are we going from here?

Abstract

This essay was motivated by the growing misinformation landscape affecting various spheres of society, especially in topics related to scientific knowledge and its implications for the area of science education. Here, we discuss analyses based on a supposed "crisis of trust" in science, positioning this phenomenon within a broader and more complex framework. We also discuss how the field of science education has positioned itself in the face of these issues, seeking to summarize current educational approaches in the context of misinformation. We engage with proposals from researchers in this field to synthesize, articulating and presenting our arguments on how to position ourselves as a field in this context. Based on the work of Bruno Latour, we propose an informed, balanced, and critical trust in science in the classroom, based on three codependent axes: i) how science is done; ii) who does science; and iii) where science is.