Postdoctoral Fellowship Position on Educational Approaches to Misinformation

The Professorship for Research on Learning and Instruction at ETH Zurich strives to discover effective, evidence-based ways to improve educational practice with an eye toward generalizable principles across content areas and issues of societal relevance. The group is looking for a postdoctoral researcher to contribute to ongoing research on educational approaches to misinformation.

Project background

Misinformation has severe negative effects on personal decision-making and societal integrity. In today’s information environment, misinformation is rampant. Over the past years, the research group has investigated the effects of training that helps people recognize misleading data visualizations, thereby reducing their negative impact on information extraction (for example, see Ramly et al., 2021). The group now seeks to broaden these efforts to the broader landscape of misinformation, including text-based and multimedia sources of misinformation.

Job description

The postdoctoral position aims to develop educational interventions that reduce the negative impact of misinformation and test their effects through experiments that combine quantitative and qualitative methods. You are expected to develop your personal research agenda grounded in a thorough review of prior research. You will conduct and publish research on educational approaches to combatting misinformation and present findings at conferences. You can benefit from the group’s well-connected international research network and the inspiring context of ETH. Teaching courses for ETH’s teacher education program and engagement in co-mentoring lab members is expected. The start date is flexible. The position is initially offered for 2 years but can be extended.

Your profile

You should hold a PhD in Educational Psychology, Learning Sciences, Cognitive Science, or a related field
Prior experience in research on topics related to the position as well as a strong publication record are expected
You should be highly motivated to conduct independent research in the fields of Learning and Instruction, Learning Sciences,
Educational Psychology, Cognitive Science, and Educational Technologies
You must be a highly committed, inherently curious individual who is excited to work with an interdisciplinary team and demonstrates a strong motivation to learn
Excellent knowledge of spoken and written English is required; additionally, fluency in written and spoken German is preferred

Curious? So are we.

Please submit the following application documents using the ETH online portal in a single merged PDF document, titled with your last name and first name (for example SmithJohn_application) in the following order:
Letter of motivation describing your qualifications and interest for the position
Detailed CV with publication list
Transcripts of all degrees (English or German)
Names and contact information of three references
2-3 representative publications

We look forward to receiving your online application by March 31, 2024. We will consider applications as they come in until the positions are filled. Please apply exclusively via the external pageETH online application portal. Applications sent by e-mail or post will not be considered.

For any questions related to this position, please contact Prof. Dr. Martina Rau ().