Conference Program

Within the framework of its Academic Freedom in Action project, the Council of Europe has expressed the ambition to “protect and promote the values of academic freedom, ensuring that higher education remains a stronghold of democracy and critical thinking.” From this perspective, the mission of universities can no longer be limited to the production and transmission of knowledge; it also includes the development, among both staff and students, of critical skills enabling them to assess the validity of arguments and information.

However, these critical skills do not appear to be evenly distributed across academic disciplines. A survey published by the Jean Jaurès Foundation in 2023 (Kraus & al. 2023) shows that adherence to misinformation varies according to students’ field of study: students in Health and Law appear more likely to endorse false information than those enrolled in the Social Sciences and Humanities or in the Arts. Based on this observation, we formulate the general hypothesis that disciplinary affiliations shape differentiated relationships to knowledge, which are more or less conducive to the development of critical thinking skills.

This raises the question of which dimensions are actually decisive in explaining adherence to or resistance against misinformation. Do these variations stem from students’ ways of learning, with a more instrumental relationship to knowledge being, for instance, less conducive to the development of reflexivity? Is rote learning necessarily associated with weaker critical capacities, or should greater attention be paid to modes of assessment, which may impose particular relationships to knowledge (Abrami & al, 2015) ? Do they relate to the degree of consensus within disciplines regarding what counts as legitimate knowledge to be taught, potentially limiting the questioning of highly stabilised forms of knowledge (Millet, 2003 ; David, 2024) ? Do they depend on the place given to epistemology within disciplinary curricula (Bernstein, 1971 ; Young, 1971 ; Forquin, 2008 ; Shay, 2016) or on the specific histories of disciplines and the additional efforts some have had to make in order to establish themselves as sciences ? Finally, what role do major sociological variables such as gender and social background play in these processes?

Drawing on a questionnaire survey conducted with 2,000 students at the University of Nantes, aimed at measuring their degree of adherence to misinformation and collecting data on their ways of learning and accessing information, as well as twelve collective interviews carried out with students grouped by discipline focusing on their relationships to their field of study and to the knowledge transmitted within it, this paper analyses the factors most likely to influence adherence to or resistance against misinformation. Based on these findings, it outlines possible avenues for action to strengthen the development of critical thinking skills in the university of tomorrow.