Instruction in the Age of Misinformation: Pedagogical Implications for Educating Responsible Knowers

Abstract

Recent calls by legislators to exclude “divisive concepts” and histories from our curricula pose a challenge to the development of students' epistemic responsibility and agency in classrooms. In this paper, Martha Perez-Mugg examines the classroom as a space for the development of epistemic responsibility, ultimately suggesting that digital literacy and civic reasoning skills underpin students' development as responsible epistemic agents. In doing so, she connects epistemic responsibility to civic reasoning and digital literacy as central aspects of democratic deliberation. Further, she offers a social epistemological framework for understanding the classroom as a core venue for the development of epistemic responsibility. In the end, Perez-Mugg explores the pedagogical implications that might arise from a deep commitment to cultivating epistemic responsibility for students.