Norwegian teachers’ understandings of conspiracy theories

Sammendrag

Throughout the autumn semester of 2021, 24 teachers from lower and upper secondary schools in Norway (year 8-13) participated in the continuing education course Conspiracy Theories in School and Online, developed by the Department of Teacher Education at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). Seven teachers who had signed up for the course were interviewed before it started to find out about their pre-understandings and knowledge of conspiracy theories (CTs) and thoughts about countering them in school. Semi-structured online interviews lasting about 35-60 minutes were transcribed and coded using attribute, descriptive and structural coding (Saldaña, 2021), gradually constructing themes for a thematic analysis (Castleberry & Nolens, 2018). Results show the teachers conceptualized CTs as problematic explanations, not even having to be about conspiracies, and that belief in CTs was always considered potentially harmful. Their understanding mirrors the layman’s understanding described by Walker (2019) influenced by the negative views on CTs from the social sciences (Thalmann, 2019). All CTs could therefore be countered by general means in school (critical thinking, skills, knowledge). But lacking resources (time, skills, knowledge), the teachers end up using the same criteria described by Krekó (2020), countering specific CTs that are popular, more likely to be harmful, and very unlikely to be true. CTs were often seen as anti-democratic, but possible democratic challenges in countering CTs in school (e.g., human rights, see Räikkä & Basham, 2019; Smallpage, 2019) were not highlighted by the teachers.