Teaching students to understand different perspectives and be able to (and see the importance of) checking facts and corroborating viewpoints a, especially when dealing with controversial issues, including those centered around the environment and sustainable living, has never been so important. With an administration constantly butting heads with scientists on such basic issues as climate change and the desirable direction of energy production, students need to feel empowered to analyze, and understand conflict and sort through facts and opinions in order to form their own ideas. In this inter-active presentation, the audience will discover some ways of integrating instruction in bias, (word connotations), structure of argument, and perspective into information literacy lesson or course, focusing discussion around recent environmental conflicts including the Dakota pipeline, the Mauna Kea telescope project, and the Flint Water crisis.
Techniques for having students work in groups analyzing documents, media, and articles relating to an environmental conflict will be discussed, along with readings related to bias in news. The group approach fits with both a social constructivist and critical pedagogy approach to teaching. A list of sources relating to news bias will be provided, along with articles to read for background on environmental issues, including cultural perspectives. Connections between bias and language will be discussed; including how to derive clues form the authors author’s tone, to infer purpose. How to teach students the importance of finding corroborating evidence will also be discussed. The audience will be able to brainstorm their own ideas on information literacy, evaluating news, and environmental/sustainability topics.
