Applying Critical Thinking in Differentiating Between Factual and Fake News: A Guide for Educators

Abstract

In this notional research, we provided a guide for educators to use critical thinking (CT) to (1) critically assess their teaching, (2) direct forthcoming interactions with students, and (3) instruct students to empower themselves by critically analyzing texts and media. To develop this concept, we leveraged the cores of CT by Erstad in Fatiha (2021), CT questions by Paul and Elder (2019), and steps of teaching CT by Chernyak in Kiki (2019). Besides, the use of news containing controversy was predicted to enable students’ CT skills and became an authentic material. In addition, the process of teaching CT was done in three parts: a) encouraging students to have an open mind, b) helping students make connections, and c) teaching students about reliable information. Also, the cores of CT consisted of a) identification skills (the problem raised and the author’s purpose), b) identifying the bias, and c) making an inference. Thus, this study dispenses an alternative model of teaching CT, especially in Indonesia context.