Education for a “Post-Truth” World: New Directions for Research and Practice

Abstract

In the so-called “post-truth” world, there exists widespread confusion and disagreement over what is known, how to know, and who to trust. Current education has largely failed to meet the challenges of this world. Grounded in a new analysis of the goals of epistemic education, we argue for new directions in instruction. Our analysis specifies three components of epistemic cognition that education should address: epistemic aims, ideals, and reliable processes. Apt epistemic performance of these components has five interwoven aspects: cognitive engagement in epistemic performance, adapting performance to diverse contexts, metacognitive regulation and understanding of performance, caring and enjoyment, and participation in performance with others. Using this framework, we show how three emblematic “post-truth” problems stem from specific breakdowns in these five aspects. We then use this analysis to argue for new directions in curriculum, instruction, and research that are needed to promote successful epistemic performance in the “post-truth” landscape.

Keywords

cognitive processes/development critical thinking descriptive analysis educational reform instructional design/development learning environments metacognition

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Allcott

Gentzkow

(2017). Social media and fake news in the 2016 election. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 31, 211–236.

Anderson

L. W.

Krathwohl

D. R.

Airasian

P. W.

Cruikshank

K. A.

Mayer

R. E.

Pintrich

P. R.

Raths

Wittrock

M. C.

(Eds.). (2001). A taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing: A revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. Longman.

Baehr

(2011). The inquiring mind: On intellectual virtues & virtue epistemology. Oxford University Press.

Bakshy

Messing

Adamic

L. A.

(2015). Exposure to ideologically diverse news and opinion on Facebook. Science, 348, 1130–1132.

Bang

(2015). Culture, learning, and development and the natural world: The influences of situative perspectives. Educational Psychologist, 50, 220–233.

Barzilai

Chinn

C. A.

(2018). On the goals of epistemic education: Promoting apt epistemic performance. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 27, 353–389.

Barzilai

Chinn

C. A.

(2020). A review of educational responses to the “post-truth” condition: Four lenses on “post-truth” problems. Educational Psychologist. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/00461520.2020.1786388

Britt

M. A.

Rouet

J.-F.

Blaum

Millis

(2019). A reasoned approach to dealing with fake news. Policy Insights From the Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 6, 94–101.

Bromme

Goldman

S. R.

(2014). The public’s bounded understanding of science. Educational Psychologist, 49, 59–69.

10.

Buckingham

(2019). Teaching media in a “post-truth” age: Fake news, media bias and the challenge for media/digital literacy education. Culture and Education, 31, 213–231.

11.

Chinn

C. A.

Barzilai

Duncan

R. G.

(2020). Disagreeing about how to know: The instructional value of explorations into knowing. Educational Psychologist. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X20940683

12.

Chinn

C. A.

Rinehart

R. W.

Buckland

L. A.

(2014). Epistemic cognition and evaluating information: Applying the AIR model of epistemic cognition. In Rapp

Braasch

(Eds.), Processing inaccurate information: Theoretical and applied perspectives from cognitive science and the educational sciences (pp. 425–453). MIT Press.

13.

Clough

M. P.

(2011). The story behind the science: Bringing science and scientists to life in post-secondary science education. Science & Education, 20, 701–718.

14.

Cobb

Stephan

McClain

(2001). Participating in classroom mathematical practices. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 10, 113–163.

15.

Collins

(2014). Are we all scientific experts now? Polity.

16.

Collins

(2015). Can we teach people what science is really like? Science Education, 99, 1049–1054.

17.

Davis

E. A.

Krajcik

J. S.

(2005). Designing educative curriculum materials to promote teacher learning. Educational Researcher, 34, 3–14.

18.

Dewey

(1991). How we think. D. C. Heath. (Original work published 1933)

19.

Duncan

R. G.

Chinn

C. A.

Barzilai

(2018). Grasp of evidence: Problematizing and expanding the Next Generation Science Standards’ conceptualization of evidence. Journal of Research in Science Education, 55, 907–937.

20.

Durlak

J. A.

Dymnicki

A. B.

Taylor

R. D.

Weissberg

R. P.

Schellinger

K. B.

(2011). The impact of enhancing students’ social and emotional learning: A meta-analysis of school based universal interventions. Child Development, 82, 405–432.

21.

Ennis

R. H.

(1987). A taxonomy of critical thinking dispositions and attitudes. In Baron

J. B.

Sternberg

R. J.

(Eds.), Teaching thinking skills: Theory and practice (pp. 9–26). Freeman.

22.

Feinstein

(2011). Salvaging science literacy. Science Education, 95(1), 168–185.

23.

Fricker

(2007). Epistemic injustice: Power & the ethics of knowing. Oxford University Press.

24.

Goldberg

(2013). Epistemic dependence in testimonial belief, in the classroom and beyond. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 47, 168–186.

25.

Goldberg

Schwarz

B. B.

Porat

(2011). “Could they do it differently?”: Narrative and argumentative changes in students’ writing following discussion of “hot” historical issues. Cognition and Instruction, 29(2), 185–217.

26.

Goldman

S. R.

Britt

M. A.

Brown

Cribb

George

Greenleaf

Lee

C. D.

Shanahan

, & Project READI. (2016). Disciplinary literacies and learning to read for understanding: A conceptual framework for disciplinary literacy. Educational Psychologist, 51, 219–246.

27.

Greene

J. A.

(2016). Interacting epistemic systems within and beyond the classroom. In Greene

J. A.

Sandoval

W. A.

Bråten

(Eds.), Handbook of epistemic cognition (pp. 265–277). Routledge.

28.

Greene

J. A.

Sandoval

W. A.

Bråten

(Eds.). (2016). Handbook of epistemic cognition. Routledge.

29.

Herrenkohl

L. R.

Cornelius

(2013). Investigating elementary students’ scientific and historical argumentation. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 22, 413–461.

30.

Hobbs

McGee

(2015). Teaching about propaganda: An examination of the historical roots of media literacy. Journal of Media Literacy Education, 6, 56–67.

31.

Illouz

(2019, September 14). A brief history of bullshit: Why we’ve learned to ignore truth. Ha’aretz. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-a-brief-history-of-bullshit-why-we-ve-learned-to-ignore-truth-1.7837206

32.

Kahan

D. M.

(2015). What is the “science of science communication”? Journal of Science Communication, 14, 1–10.

33.

Kavanagh

Rich

M. D.

(2018). Truth decay: An initial exploration of the diminishing role of facts and analysis in American public life. Rand Corporation.

34.

Keren

(2018). The public understanding of what? Laypersons’ epistemic needs, the division of cognitive labor, and the demarcation of science. Philosophy of Science, 5, 781–792.

35.

Kiely

Robertson

(2016). How to spot fake news. http://www.factcheck.org/2016/11/how-to-spot-fake-news/#

36.

Kienhues

Bromme

Jucks

(2020). Sealing the gateways for post-truthism: Re-establishing the epistemic authority of science. Educational Psychologist. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/00461520.2020.1784012

37.

Kouzy

Abi Jaoude

Kraitem

El Alam

M. B.

Karam

Adib

Zarka

Traboulsi

Akel

E. W.

Baddour

(2020). Coronavirus goes viral: Quantifying the covid-19 misinformation epidemic on twitter. Cureus, 12(3), e7255–e7255. https://doi.org/10.7759/cureus.7255

38.

Kunda

(1990). The case for motivated reasoning. Psychological Bulletin, 108, 480–498.

39.

Lapsley

D. K.

Chaloner

D. T.

(2020). Post-truth and science identity: A virtue-based approach to science education. Educational Psychologist. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/00461520.2020.1778480

40.

Lewandowsky

Ecker

U. K. H.

Cook

(2017). Beyond misinformation: Understanding and coping with the “post-truth” era. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 6, 353–369.

41.

Longino

H. E.

(2002). The fate of knowledge. Princeton University Press.

42.

Lynch

M. P.

(2010). Epistemic circularity and epistemic incommensurability. In Haddock

Millar

Pritchard

(Eds.), Social epistemology (pp. 262–277). Oxford University Press.

43.

Lynch

M. P.

(2016). The internet of us: Knowing more and understanding less in the age of big data. WW Norton & Company.

44.

Macedo-Rouet

Potocki

Scharrer

Ros

Stadtler

Salmerón

Rouet

J. F.

(2019). How good is this page? Benefits and limits of prompting on adolescents’ evaluation of web information quality. Reading Research Quarterly, 54, 299–321.

45.

McIntyre

(2018). Post-truth. MIT Press.

46.

Metz

S. E.

Weisberg

D. S.

Weisberg

(2018). Non-scientific criteria for belief sustain counter-scientific beliefs. Cognitive Science. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.12584

47.

Mirra

Garcia

Morrell

(2016). Doing youth participatory research: Transforming inquiry with researchers, educators, and students. Routledge.

48.

Muis

K. R.

Chevrier

Singh

C. A.

(2018). The role of epistemic emotions in personal epistemology and self-regulated learning. Educational Psychologist, 53(3), 165–184.

49.

National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, Council of Chief State School Officers. (2010). Common Core State Standards.

50.

NGSS Lead States. (2013). Next Generation Science Standards: For states, by states. National Academies Press.

51.

Penuel

W. R.

Gallagher

D. J.

(2017). Creating research-practice partnerships in education. Harvard Education Press.

52.

Polman

J. L.

Newman

Saul

E. W.

Farrar

(2014). Adapting practices of science journalism to foster science literacy. Science Education, 98, 766–791.

53.

Prado

C. G.

(Ed.). (2018). America’s post-truth phenomenon: When feelings and opinions trump facts and evidence. Praeger.

54.

Robertson

(2016). Testimonial virtue. In Baehr

(Ed.), Intellectual virtues and education: Essays in applied virtue epistemology (pp. 128–141). Routledge.

55.

Scharrer

Stadtler

Bromme

(2019). Judging scientific information: Does source evaluation prevent the seductive effect of text easiness. Learning and Instruction, 63, 101215. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2019.101215

56.

Schooljournalism.org. (2018). News matters: 21st century skills. https://www.schooljournalism.org/

57.

Sinatra

G. M.

Broughton

S. H.

Lombardi

(2014). Emotions in science education. In Pekrun

Linnenbrink-Garcia

(Eds.), International handbook of emotions in education (pp. 415–436). Routledge.

58.

Sismondo

(2018). Extraordinary popular delusions and the manipulation of crowds. In Prado

C. G.

(Ed.). America’s post-truth phenomenon: When feelings and opinions trump facts and evidence (pp. 72–86). Praeger.

59.

Sosa

(2014). Knowledge and time: Kripke’s dogmatism paradox and the ethics of belief. In Matheson

Vitz

(Eds.), The ethics of belief: Individual and social (pp. 77–88). Oxford University Press.

60.

Sosa

(2015). Judgment and agency. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

61.

Tate

M. A.

Alexander

J. E.

(1999). Web wisdom: How to evaluate and create information quality on the web. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

62.

Thompson

Windschitl

Braaten

(2013). Developing a theory of ambitious early-career teacher practice. American Educational Research Journal, 50(3), 574–615.

63.

Turri

Alfano

Greco

(2019). Virtue epistemology. In Zalta

E. N.

(Ed.), The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2019/entries/epistemology-virtue/

64.

Walsh

E. M.

Tsurusaki

B. K.

(2017). “Thank you for being Republican”: Negotiating science and political identities in climate change learning. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 27(1), 8–48.