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 of critical skills among both staff and students. These skills enable 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 factors are most decisive in fostering critical thinking skills. Do differences arise from students’ ways of learning, such as a more instrumental relationship to knowledge or the use of rote learning? Or do they depend more on assessment practices, which may encourage specific relationships to knowledge (Abrami et al., 2015)? Beyond individual learning practices, do disciplinary contexts matter, for instance through the degree of consensus about what counts as legitimate knowledge, the place given to epistemology in curricula, or the historical development of disciplines (Millet, 2003; Bernstein, 1971; Shay, 2016)? Finally, how do major sociological variables such as gender and social background shape these processes (Renisio, 2015) ?

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