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We provide Committees of the AUTHOR DIRECTORATE-GENERAL FOR INTERNAL POLICIES

European Parliament in the area of Hanna SIAROVA,Dalibor STERNADEL,Eszter SZŐNYI POLICY DEPARTMENT
STRUCTURAL AND COHESION POLICIES
Structural & Cohesion Policies with a
dedicated research service.
As a Policy Department we do our own
research but also contract external
experts to deliver studies and briefings
for the Committees. Science and
Scientific
The full study is available here:
http://bit.ly/629-188
Literacy as an
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L009141
IP/B/IC/CULT/2018-129
PE629.188 March 2019 How to combat the
influence of
misinformation and
pseudo-science.

A study commissioned by the

Committee on Education
 MAIN
CONCLUSIONS
• There is a need for a holistic vision of scientific
literacy in school curricula and competence
frameworks for learners and teachers. Critical
thinking and active engagement should be
emphasised as important learning outcomes along
with fundamental literacy, scientific knowledge and
competences and a contextual understanding of
science.
The development of comprehensive assessment
• instruments is necessary to embrace scientific
literacy in a more holistic fashion and to understand
which educational approaches can help in its
advancement.
• Fostering scientific literacy requires an integrated
approach involving investment in, and rethinking
of, both formal and non-formal education.
• Teaching scientific literacy needs to be integrated
across educational levels and subject areas, targeting
learners of all ages.
• Encourage a more developed educational approach
based on fact-checking to ‘inoculate’ the general
public against misinformation. A wider public
awareness of media and scientific literacy could
address any distortion of facts.
• Professional development opportunities for teachers
could better reflect the competences they require to
develop scientifically literate students through
innovative science teaching methods and
cross-curricular approaches to scientific literacy.
• The promotion of Open Science can improve public
access to scientific information. It is also crucial to
incentivise scientists to take a more active part in
science-related public debates to combat the
influence of misinformation and pseudo-science.
ABSTRACT FOCUS ON
European societies are faced with it is crucial to understand the state of
emerging threats relating to the spread of scientific literacy in Europe and to
disinformation and pseudo-science. strengthen key approaches which
underpin it.
In this context, fostering scientific literacy
can provide people with tools to navigate Promoting scientific literacy in
and critically address the vast amounts of European societies is one of the
information exchanged in public debate, solutions in the fight against the spread
and support democratic processes. of inaccurate and distorted information
to ensure an evidence-informed
Building on a review of academic and democratic dialogue.
policy literature, this study focuses on the
state of scientific literacy in the EU and on
potential education policy responses to
better prepare scientifically literate
citizens. Comments on this study are welcome at:
poldep-cohesion@europarl.europa.eu
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The full study is available here:
http://bit.ly/629-188