Training Teachers on Disinformation: A Pedagogical Opportunity
As part of a training course offered by Média Animation, secondary teachers explored various ways to address disinformation in the classroom. Their feedback highlights the richness of the approaches used and the potential of media education embedded within academic disciplines.
“An ideal lesson sequence involves contextualisation, decontextualisation, and recontextualisation. It’s a three-step waltz.”
— Science teacher
What if disinformation could serve as a starting point to develop critical thinking? That was the educational challenge set during the “Disinformation and Propaganda” training, part of the EDMO BELUX project. Over two days, teachers from diverse subject areas analysed real-world examples of rumours, conspiracy theories, and viral content using a five-pronged framework: factual, discursive, ideological, cognitive, and social.
A Variety of Disciplines, a Shared Objective
The testimonials collected at the end of the training confirm it: addressing disinformation is not only possible, but also relevant, across all subject areas. In history, source criticism resonates with the biases embedded in historical narratives:
“Even ancient sources carry assumptions. Analysing why a historical figure is portrayed a certain way is already a form of critical thinking.”
In social sciences, digital practices and dissemination mechanisms (rumours, conspiracies, disinformation) offer timely and engaging material to explore:
“It’s not explicitly stated in the curriculum, but in social sciences we already regularly address these issues. It’s easy to start from young people’s use of social media.”
In science classes, misconceptions become effective pedagogical entry points:
“An article claimed that mRNA vaccines could alter DNA. I used it as a lesson hook to debunk that idea through molecular biology.”
From Fact-Checking to Critical Distance
This training went far beyond simple fact-checking. It encouraged teachers to deconstruct narratives, identify intent, rhetorical strategies, and patterns of reception. It equipped them to build on students’ representations—not to judge them, but to question them constructively.
“What I found interesting was that we looked at all kinds of mechanisms: rumours, conspiracies, disinformation… It makes me want to build a module around that.”
Media Education Woven into the Curriculum
Rather than teaching about fake news as an add-on, the trained teachers left with the desire to embed these topics into learning activities—confronting them with disciplinary content, investigative methods, or the history of ideas. They demonstrated that media education is not an extra module, but a cross-cutting tool that gives meaning to learning.