Enhancing pre-service teachers’ self-efficacy to educate critical online readers

With growing concerns about mis- and disinformation online, teachers play an important role in educating critical online readers. To fulfill this responsibility, they must feel confident in teaching online credibility evaluation skills. To address this issue, we conducted two studies in two Finnish universities among Finnish-speaking pre-service teachers. In Study I, we developed a teacher self-efficacy measure for online credibility evaluation, including three dimensions: self-efficacy in discipline-specific online credibility evaluation, self-efficacy in general online credibility evaluation, and self-efficacy in teaching online credibility evaluation. Results indicated that three dimensions were distinct but highly correlated. In Study II, we applied the developed measure to assess the efficacy of a university course grounded in five design principles for enhancing pre-service teachers’ self-efficacy in online credibility evaluation. We employed a quasi-experimental pre-post test design with intervention and control groups and conducted a qualitative analysis of pre-service teachers’ written reflections to enrich quantitative results. The course enhanced pre-service teachers’ self-efficacy, particularly in teaching online credibility evaluation skills, as also evidenced by their reflections on benefits of several course elements. Results suggest that pre-service teachers benefit from opportunities to practice and reflect on their own credibility evaluation skills and, in collaboration with peers, to carefully design and implement classroom instruction for online credibility evaluation.