Camila Arnal

Part of a project with Régine Kolinsky, Olivier Klein, José Morais, Méghane Tossonian, Julia Justino, & Sabina Rautu

Abstract. The links between democracy, education and the processes of intellectual self-defense, which include critical and argumentative thinking as well
as information validation, resistance to misinformation, like fake news and conspiracy theories, have been widely discussed. Yet, recommendations for developing critical thinking and digital literacy are rarely tested empirically. We combine social and cognitive psychology and psycholinguistics approach to examine experimentally the impact of literacy learning on socio-cognitive skills that are essential for exerting citizenship. We use an experimental and quantitative approach, based on a longitudinal research design. Our participants are adolescents attending vocational education and functional illiterate adults who will undergo literacy and critical thinking training. There will be a group in which we will perform the intervention based on written support. In another group, we will perform the intervention based on oral support. In this way, we will be able to shed light on the relation of written or oral support to the development of literacy and critical thinking. We will work using So-CoIL methodology, that is inspired by Socratic method and Community of Philosophical Inquiry CoPI method. The 21/01, I will present the line of research that I’m developing within the framework of So-CoIL project.