This document summarizes a study examining teachers' roles as sources of authority and trust during health education lessons. The study observed 18 hours of lessons and interviewed teachers afterwards. It found that students heavily relied on teachers' subject knowledge for information and to evaluate other sources. When teachers were uncertain, it created tensions in meaning making. The study concludes teachers should develop critical thinking skills to guide students towards trustworthy sources and address multiliteracy in training to better support students in the information age.

1. In Teachers We Trust –
Or Do We?
A Nexus Analytic Study of a Teacher’s Role as a
Trustee
Tuula Nygård, University of Oulu
ECER, September 2019

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What to believe
and whom to
trust?
by Juha Juopperi, with the permission of Martta & Topias Nygård

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CogAHealth - Cognitive Authorities in Everyday Health
Information Environments of Young People (2016-2020)
http://www.oulu.fi/cogahealth-en/

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Context • Health education
• Independent mandatory subject in Finnish
secondary schools (Grades 7-9: 13-15 yrs.)
• Aims at promoting students’ health literacy
FNBE, 2014
• Health literacy
• Capacity to obtain, process, and understand
the basic health information and services in
making health decisions Ratzan & Parker, 2000
• Transversal competences in
curriculum
• Multiliteracy
• Thinking and learning to learn
FNBE, 2014
Health
education
Health
literacy
Transversal
competences

5. University of Oulu
Theoretical frame
• Cognitive authority
• What to believe and who to trust in?
○ Person
○ Book, magazine
○ Webpage
• Impact on thinking
• Socio-constructive process
McKenzie 2003; Rieh, 2005; Wilson, 1983
• Trustee
• Guides a one to make choices between
information sources and cognitive
authorities Jessen & Jørgensen 2012
Cognitive
authority
Trustee
Informational
authority

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RQ’s
RQ1 How is teacher’s subject content
knowledge utilized by students in
information seeking and evaluation
tasks during health education lessons?
RQ2 What kind of influence teacher’s
opinions about trustworthy information
sources have in students’ choices of
useful sources?

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Study
• Observation data approx.
18 hrs
• Post-observation teacher
interviews
• Discussions during the
data gathering
• Nexus analysis as a
theoretical lens
Scollon & Scollon, 2004
the aim was to identify teachers’
informational authority roles, when students
were seeking and evaluating information in
groups

8. RQ1
Utilizing teachers’ subject content
knowledge in information seeking
and evaluating tasks

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Teacher as a cognitive authority
“Lactose intolerance is a symptom, I
mean, lactose intolerance is
malabsorption of lactose, which
causes flatulence and upset and so
forth.”
• Visible phenomenon
• Students leaned on the teachers’
knowledge easily
• Teachers strove to answer the
questions
• Without delay
• From memory, on the basis of
their previous knowledge,
experiences and perceptions.

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When a tension occurs into information
evaluation…
Celina: Teacher! What is a combined series b of
bacterial culture?
T1: (helping other group, while replying to Celina) I
cannot tell what those analyses are, but probably
they are for the detection of some Salmonella
bacteria.
Celina: Because in here it says that the stool sample…
T1: yea…
Celina: It may be some different thing, because stool
sample, culture and a combined series b of bacterial
culture…
T1: Something or other, I cannot say.
Celina: I am wondering whether it is worth putting it
[on the slides], because I certainly don’t know...
T1: You just put that stool sample.
Celina: Yea

11. RQ2
Teachers as guides towards
trustworthy information sources

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Information sources
• Primary information sources
• Leaflets
• Internet sources
• Health education textbook
• Teacher
• Less recommended sources
“We read
Wikipedia, but we
didn’t understand
anything about
it.”
Teacher! Teacher! Is
lactose intolerance
a disease?

13. Teacher as a trusteeMina An allergic rhinitis is a paradigm of an atopic rhinitis…allergy!?
Rachel Whaat??
Teacher That was a complicated one. What I know it causes… Atopics’ skin in the crooks and the
corners of the mouth and around eyes is…
Rachel I have then probably an atopic skin.
Teacher But can an atopic get an anaphylactic shock that would be general…suffocating style…
Mina (reads aloud from the source)…develops quickly, often in few minutes…An allergic rhinitis is
a paradigm of an atopic allergy. What is a paradigm?
Teacher Ask your mother! /gives a laugh/
Mina My mother??
Teacher Yes. She is a doctor, isn’t she?
Mina Yes she is. It is so… I cannot explain, you don’t understand it anyway!
Teacher Is she psychiatrist... Or what kind of doctor is she? But a doctor still.
Mina She is a specialist in physiatry, and she is some psychiatric nurse as well. And she has all
kinds [of training].
Teacher But, after all, she is a doctor...but a basic physician first?
Mina Yeah.
Teacher Could she explain it then?
Mina Well, probably she could. Or then not. Because she surely has forgotten half of her training.

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Discussion
• Crucial teachers’ content knowledge
• Confounding information
• difficult to evaluate credibility
• teacher
• varying informational authority roles
• Significance of the moments of tension
• collective meaning making
• evaluation
• learning

15. Conclusions
• Adaptation to the demands of
contemporary information society
• Significance of criticality and multiliteracy
should be addressed by all teachers
• In health education teacher training and
in-service training, multiliteracy should
gain a strong toehold
• More research needed of teacher-
student-relationship and students’ trust
in teachers
Friday, April 24, 2020 Tuula Nygård 15

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Main References
FNBE. (2014). National core curriculum for basic education 2014. Helsinki: Finnish National Board of
Education.
Jessen, J., & Jørgensen, A.H. (2012). Aggregated trustworthiness: Redefining online credibility
through social validation. First Monday 17(1-2).
McKenzie, P. J. (2003). Justifying cognitive authority decisions: Discursive strategies of information
seekers. The Library Quarterly, 73(3), 261–288.
Ratzan, S.C., & Parker, R.M. (2000). Introduction. In C.R. Selden, M. Zorn, S.C. Ratzan and R.M. Parker
(Eds.), Current Bibliographies in Medicine - Health Literacy (pp. v–vi). Bethesda: National Library of
Medicine.
Rieh, S.Y. (2005). Cognitive authority. In K.E. Fisher, S. Erdelez, & E. F. McKechnie (Eds.), Theories of
information behavior: A researchers’ guide (pp. 83-87). Medford, NJ: Information Today.
Scollon, R., & Scollon, S.W. (2004). Nexus analysis. Discourse and the emerging internet. London:
Routledge.
Wilson, P. (1983). Second-hand knowledge: An inquiry into cognitive authority. Westport, CT:
Greenwood Press.