A recent study revealed students at an international school in Finland significantly outperformed US students on tasks which measure digital literacy in social media and online news. The researchers suggest this may be due to the Finnish and International Baccalaureate curricula’s different way of facilitating students’ critical thinking skills compared to the US system and curriculum.

Critical thinking is a 21st century skill considered essential for today’s students to navigate the Information Age and for their future work life.

But how well does the education system encourage the development of these skills?

In a recent study tasks measuring digital media literacy were administered at an international school in Finland to consider the efficacy and transfer of critical thinking skills. The task instruments utilised in the study were earlier developed by the Stanford History Education Group to determine the extent to which young people ask ‘Who is behind the information?’ and ‘What is the evidence?’ in scenarios taken from real world online situations.

The executive summary published by the Stanford researchers in winter of 2016 received widespread coverage from major news outlets around the world due to its corresponding with the advent of the ‘fake news’ phenomenon, as well as for the Stanford researchers describing U.S. student performance as ‘dismaying’ and ‘bleak’.

«Many of the international outlets generalised the results of the U.S. students to their own socio-educational environments, which our more recent study cautions against,» comment Shane Horn and Koen Veermans, who conducted the Finnish study at the University of Turku in Finland.

Story Source: Materials provided by University of Turku. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.