Promoting Societal-Oriented Communication and Decision Making Skills by Learning about Advertising in Science Education

Abstract

In our everyday lives we are surrounded by advertising in its various forms. Thus in the school context it is not surprising that the issue of advertising is addressed by different subjects, with the main foci being advertising-specific language, images and illustrations, use of stereotypes, strategies of persuasion etc. But advertising also contains factual information, being explicit or implicit, to make a campaign more credible and underline the effectiveness of a certain product. Dealing with the use of factual information in advertising critically is important for the consumer. For many products this information is derived from science and technology. Understanding the science in and behind advertising is necessary to become a critical consumer. Learning about the use of science in advertising also allows promoting societal-oriented communication and decision making skills in the science classroom. Unfortunately, only a few examples on the use of advertising in the science classroom exist. This paper provides a justification for the use of advertising in science education. Examples from the classroom developed in the framework of the PROFILES-project are provided by way of illustration.

Learning with and about advertising in chemistry education with a lesson plan on natural cosmetics – a case study

“…To illustrate how science-related information in the media and advertising is transformed and filtered, Belova and Eilks (2014) recently adopted a model of filtered information in advertising based on Stuckey et al (2015) (see also Eilks et al, 2014). This model describes the information transfer from science into advertising, while at the same time providing justification for the fact that critical perception requires more than just understanding the content behind advertisements.…”

“…However, the few advertising-related teaching ideas available in science education rarely focus on such critical media literacy goals as evaluation skills or, especially, media creation and its various sources (Belova et al, in print). Although science education seems to be the only place to bridge the gap between meta-knowledge about ads and the science content knowledge employed by them, a solid connection is seldom created in the science classroom (Belova and Eilks, 2014). Based on an analysis of the relevant literature, Belova and Eilks (2014) recently suggested four potential roles which advertising can play in science education.…”

“…Although science education seems to be the only place to bridge the gap between meta-knowledge about ads and the science content knowledge employed by them, a solid connection is seldom created in the science classroom (Belova and Eilks, 2014). Based on an analysis of the relevant literature, Belova and Eilks (2014) recently suggested four potential roles which advertising can play in science education. The roles differ in their complexity and in their potential contributions to scientific media literacy.…”

“…Despite the identification of a whole range of roles and corresponding purposes which advertising might serve in science education, advertising has not reached prominence in the science education literature to date (Belova and Eilks, 2014).…”

“…Searches in relevant databases document that advertising has almost exclusively remained a topic in the humanities and in social science subjects, especially language education (Belova et al, in print). Unfortunately, these subjects hardly focus their reflections on the reliability of the scientific information used in advertising (Belova and Eilks, 2014). Therefore the current project aims to develop a teaching and learning module around the four roles described above through a case study.…”