Politically tumultuous times have created a problematic space for teachers who include the news in their classrooms. Few studies have explored perceptions of news credibility among secondary social studies teachers, the educators most likely to regularly incorporate news media into their classrooms. We investigated teachers’ operational definitions of credibility and the relationships between political ideology and assessments of news source credibility. Most teachers in this study used either static or dynamic definitions to describe news media sources’ credibility. Further, teachers’ conceptualizations of credibility and perceived ideological differences with news sources were associated with how credible teachers found each source. These results indicate potential inconsistencies in how news credibility is defined and possible political bias in which sources social studies teachers use as exemplars of credibility.
AppelmanA.SundarS. S. (2016). Measuring message credibility: Construction and validation of an exclusive scale. Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, 93, 59–79.
2.
boydd. (2017). Did media literacy backfire?Journal of Applied Youth Studies, 1(4), 83–89.
3.
ClarkC. H. (2018). The impact of student political identity over the course of an online controversial issue discussion. Democracy & Education, 26(2), Article 1.
4.
ClarkC. H.AveryP. G. (2016). The psychology of controversial issues discussions: Challenges and opportunities in a polarized, post-9/11 society. In JournellW. (Ed.), Reassessing the social studies curriculum: Promoting critical civic engagement in a politically polarized, post-9/11 world (pp. 109–120). Rowman & Littlefield.
CroccoM. S.SegallA.HalvorsenA.-L.JacobsenR. (2018). Deliberating public policy issues with adolescents. Democracy & Education, 26(1), 1–10.
7.
FeldmanS.JohnstonC. (2014). Understanding the determinants of political ideology: Implications of structural complexity. Political Psychology, 35(3), 337–358.
GarrettH. J. (2017). Learning to be in the world with others: Difficult knowledge and social studies education. Peter Lang.
10.
GawronskiB.GaldiS.ArcuriL. (2015). What can political psychology learn from implicit measures? Empirical evidence and new directions. Political Psychology, 36(1), 1–17. http://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12094
11.
GazianoC.McGrathK. (1986). Measuring the concept of credibility. Journalism Quarterly, 63(3), 451–462.
12.
HaasM. E.LaughlinM. A. (2000, April24–28). Teaching current events: It’s status in social studies today [Paper presentation]. Annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans, LA, United States.
13.
HaidtJ. (2012). The righteous mind: Why good people are divided by politics and religion. Vintage Books.
14.
HalvorsenA. (2013). A history of elementary social studies: Romance and reality. Peter Lang.
15.
HessD. E.McAvoyP. (2015). The political classroom: Evidence and ethics in democratic education. Routledge.
16.
HodginE.KahneJ. (2019). Judging credibility in un-credible times: Three educational approaches for the digital age. In JournellW. (Ed.), Unpacking fake news: An educators guide to navigating the media with students (pp. 92–108). Teachers College Press.
17.
IretonC.PosettiJ. (2018). Journalism, “fake news” & disinformation. UNESCO.
JournellW. (2011a). The disclosure dilemma in action: A qualitative look at the effect of teacher disclosure on classroom instruction. Journal of Social Studies Research, 35(2), 217–244.
22.
JournellW. (2011b). Teachers’ controversial issue decisions related to race, gender, and religion during the 2008 presidential election. Theory & Research in Social Education, 39(3), 348–392. http://doi.org/10.1080/00933104.2011.10473459
23.
JournellW. (2016). Making a case for teacher political disclosure. Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 35(1), 100–111.
24.
KahneJ.BowyerB. (2017). Educating for democracy in a partisan age: Confronting the challenges of motivated reasoning and misinformation. American Educational Research Journal, 54(1), 3–34. http://doi.org/10.3102/0002831216679817
25.
KahnemanD. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux.
Kelly-WoessnerA.WoessnerM. (2008). Conflict in the classroom: Considering the effects of partisan difference on political education. Journal of Political Science Education, 4(3), 265–285. http://doi.org/10.1080/15512160802202789
30.
KnowlesR. T. (2018). Teaching who you are: Connecting teachers’ civic education ideology to instructional strategies. Theory and Research in Social Education, 46(1), 68–109. http://doi.org/10.1080/00933104.2017.1356776
LeCompteM. D. (2000). Analyzing qualitative data. Theory Into Practice, 39(3), 146–154.
33.
LipscombG.DoppenF. (2013). Finding one’s place in the world. Current events in the K–12 social studies classroom. In PasseJ.FitchettP. (Eds.), The status of social studies: Views from the field (pp. 247–256). Information Age.
34.
LodgeM.TaberC. (2005). The automaticity of affect for political leaders, groups and issues: An experimental test of the hot cognition hypothesis. Political Psychology, 26(3), 455–482.
35.
LodgeM.TaberC. (2013). The rationalizing voter. Cambridge University Press.
36.
LordC. G.RossL.LepperM. R. (1979). Biased assimilation and attitude polarization: The effects of prior theories on subsequently considered evidence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37(11), 2098–2109. http://doi.org/10.1037//0022-3514.37.11.2098
37.
McAvoyP.HessD. (2013). Classroom deliberation in an era of political polarization. Curriculum Inquiry, 43(1), 14–47. http://doi.org/10.1111/curi.12000
38.
McCroskeyJ. C.TevenJ. J. (1999). Goodwill: A reexamination of the construct and its measurement. Communications Monographs, 66(1), 90–103.
39.
McGrewS.BreakstoneJ.OrtegaT.SmithM.WineburgS. (2018). Can students evaluate online sources? Learning from assessments of civic online reasoning. Theory and Research in Social Education, 46(2), 165–193. http://doi.org/10.1080/00933104.2017.1416320
National Council for the Social Studies. (2016). A vision of powerful teaching and learning the social studies: A position statement of National Council for the Social Studies. Social Education, 80(3), 180–182.
45.
NickersonR. S. (1998). Confirmation bias: A ubiquitous phenomenon in many guises. Review of General Psychology, 2(2), 175–220. http://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.2.2.175
46.
NiemiN. S.NiemiR. G. (2007). Partisanship, participation, and political trust as taught (or not) in high school history and government classes. Theory & Research in Social Education, 35(1), 32–61.
47.
PaceJ. (2011). The complex and unequal impact of high stakes accountability on untested social studies. Theory & Research in Social Education, 39(1), 32–60.
SchmeichelM.GarrettJ.RanschaertR.McanultyJ.ThompsonS.JanisS.ClarkC.YagataS.BivensB. (2018). The complexity of learning to teach news media in social studies education. Journal of Media Literacy Education, 10(2), 86–103.
50.
SinclairH. (2018, August15). Trump’s war on media: Most republicans now back the president’s view of press as “enemy of the people,” poll shows. Newsweek.com.
51.
TajfelH. (1970). Experiments in intergroup discrimination. Scientific America, 223(5), 96–102.
52.
TajfelH.TurnerJ. C. (1979). An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. In AustinW. G.WorchelS. (Eds.), The social psychology of intergroup relations (pp. 33–47). Brooks/Cole.
ZimmermanJ.RobertsonE. (2017). The case for contention: Teaching controversial issues in American schools. University of Chicago Press.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
