Critical Literacy and Digital Citizenship: Misinformation and Gender Bias in the Training of Primary and History Teachers

Abstract

Research on critical literacy, which initially emerged from the field of linguistics, has systematically addressed evolving communication needs and challenges in multimodal environments. Technological acceleration, marked by the advent of generative artificial intelligence, social media, and the virtualization of communication, presents urgent challenges posed by new languages and forms of interaction. In this context, contemporary scholarship focuses on understanding how meaning is constructed and interpreted in Web 3.0, where interactivity, participation, and the decentralization of information is fundamental.

This qualitative study analyzes digital critical literacy skills and the presence of gender biases in a sample of twenty first-year pre-service teachers from the History, Geography, and Social Sciences (HHGCS) Pedagogy programs and the Primary Education (PE) program at a Chilean university. The research is situated within the challenges that hypermediality poses for digital citizenship, where misinformation and biases, particularly gender biases, represent a risk to democratic coexistence.

The theoretical framework is based on the concepts of digital citizenship, digital civic reasoning, and the SIFT (Stop, Investigate the Source, Find better coverage, Trace) information evaluation strategy proposed by Caulfield and Wineburg (2023), to which this study adds the skill of “Evaluate.” Methodologically, a comparative case study design was employed, using the think-aloud technique while participants carried out a performance task. This task involved searching for and evaluating information on a controversial gender situation related to the “Tradwife” movement.

The results reveal significant deficiencies in digital literacy skills. In evaluating reliable sources, no student reached an advanced level. Sixty percent of PE students and 30% of HHGCS students were at a basic level, as they used superficial criteria to judge the reliability of information. An emergent finding was the uncritical use of the generative AI summary provided by Google.

When applying the SIFT strategy, the most developed skill was “Find better coverage,” while “Stop” and “Evaluate” were the least mastered. Differences were observed between programs: HHGCS students demonstrated an overall higher performance than PE students, suggesting a positive influence of their specific training in working with historical and social sources.

Regarding gender biases, while the majority of the students rejected the premise of the “Tradwife” movement as a solution to the double workday, confirmation biases and a limited understanding of the underlying ideologies were evident. Female students and those male students with a stronger feminist self-identification showed greater personal engagement and a deeper understanding of the structural nature of the gender problem.

In conclusion, the study underscores the urgent need to strengthen training in digital critical literacy and citizenship within teacher education programs, integrating the analysis of misinformation and gender biases. The performance differences between programs suggest the importance of the specific curriculum, projecting future research to evaluate the progression of these skills throughout the training and the educational trajectories of the highest-performing students.