Given the current threat posed by toxic digital content, preparing students to evaluate online sources cannot be relegated to a single subject area. This instruction must happen across the curriculum. This article focuses on curriculum materials designed to teach students to evaluate online information across subject areas following a set of design principles: (1) Focus on a core question and strategy; (2) engage students in evaluating real online content; (3) feature cognitive apprenticeship and formative assessment; (4) support teacher learning. Ninth grade biology and world geography teachers taught a series of curriculum-embedded lessons based on these design principles. We examined whether these lessons helped students become more skilled evaluators of online content. Pretest/posttest data (n =574) showed statistically significant growth in students’ ability to evaluate the credibility of online content. We analyze the role played by the curriculum design principles in this interdisciplinary intervention and explore implications for future initiatives.

The ability to find credible information online is necessary for informed civic engagement in the 21st century. This need is particularly acute for young people, who often turn to the Internet to learn about social and political issues. Preparing students to evaluate online content, particularly as it concerns social and political issues, aligns with broader efforts to reinvigorate the civic mission of colleges and universities. We analyzed how college students (n = 263) evaluated online sources about public policy issues. Results showed that a majority employed ineffective strategies for evaluating digital information. Many of the strategies students used mirrored advice found on college and university websites. These findings suggest a need to reconsider post-secondary approaches to teaching online evaluation strategies.

Low-quality and misleading information online can hijack people’s attention, often by evoking curiosity, outrage or anger. Resisting certain types of information and actors online requires people to adopt new mental habits that help them avoid being tempted by attention-grabbing and potentially harmful content. We argue that digital information literacy must include the competence of “critical ignoring”—choosing what to ignore and where to invest one’s limited attentional capacities. We review three types of cognitive strategies for implementing critical ignoring: self-nudging, in which people ignore temptations by removing them from their digital environments; lateral reading, which requires users to vet information by leaving the source and verifying its credibility elsewhere online; and the “do not feed the trolls” heuristic, which advises people to not reward malicious actors with attention. We argue that these strategies implementing critical ignoring should be part of school curricula on digital information literacy. Teaching the competence of critical ignoring requires a paradigm shift in educators’ thinking, from a sole focus on the power and promise of paying close attention to an additional emphasis on the power of ignoring. Encouraging students and other online users to embrace critical ignoring can empower them to shield themselves from the excesses, traps, and information disorders of today’s attention economy.

To contain the initial spread of the SARS-CoV2 virus and the COVID-19 disease, many countries opted to close schools. However, the importance of schooling to mitigate inequalities motivated many economies to reopen schools after having formulated various COVID-19 mitigation and containment strategies. Using an exploratory sequential mixed method design, we explore the measures undertaken by countries when reopening schools and how these measures varied cross-nationally. We find that countries formulated a wide number (total: 242) and range of school reopening measures to mitigate the spread of the virus in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. From a policy diffusion theoretical perspective, findings from our statistical analyses suggest that cross-national diversity in policies is related to both internal and external country factors such as peer emulation mechanisms, income, and past pandemic experiences. We urge international agencies for more explicit guidelines for effective school reopening measures.

There is increasing interest in applying neuroscience findings to topics in education. Purpose: This application requires a proper conceptualisation of the relation between cognition and brain function. This paper considers two such conceptualisations. The area focus understands each cognitive competency as the product of one (and only one) brain area. The network focus explains each cognitive competency as the product of collaborative processing among multiple brain areas. Sources of evidence: We first review neuroscience studies of mathematical reasoning-specifically arithmetic problem-solving and magnitude comparison-that exemplify the area focus and network focus. We then review neuroscience findings that illustrate the potential of the network focus for informing three topics in mathematics education: the development of mathematical reasoning, the effects of practice and instruction, and the derailment of mathematical reasoning in dyscalculia. Main argument: Although the area focus has historically dominated discussions in educational neuroscience, we argue that the network focus offers a complementary perspective on brain function that should not be ignored. Conclusions: We conclude by describing the current limitations of network-focus theorising and emerging neuroscience methods that promise to make such theorising more tractable in the future.

This paper describes a partnership between a university and an urban school district, formed with a goal of preparing mathematics teacher leaders to conduct professional development (PD) at their schools. The university and district partners worked together to achieve the district’s mission of providing every student with high-quality instruction and equitable learning opportunities in mathematics by building the district’s capacity to conduct school-based PD for mathematics teachers. Given the power of school-based subject-specific PD for improving instructional quality, we worked with Teacher Leaders from participating schools to prepare and support them to lead PD workshops at their schools. In this paper we examine how Teacher Leaders learn and adapt key elements of a PD model over three school years through the lenses of Prediger et al.'s Three-Tetrahedron-Model (2019) and the university’s Learning to Lead model. Over three years we see that Teacher Leaders use the key structures of the PD model, make adaptations in response to school goals, interests, and priorities, and gain confidence in their work with colleagues. By viewing the adaptations through the lens of pedagogies of practice as well as the relationships illustrated by the 3-T model, this work offers insights into the complexities of teacher leadership development.

Misinformation has become a regular feature of the Internet. Research suggests that everyone, including young people who have grown up with digital devices, struggles to differentiate fact from fiction online because they read closely rather than turn to external sources. We analyzed the resources students find when they seek advice offered by college or university web sites on evaluating the credibility of online information. A random sample of 50 universities indicated that for nearly all institutions, students are advised to engage in close reading to determine credibility. We conclude by recommending that institutions overhaul how they teach students to evaluate online sources.

Are today’s students able to discern quality information from sham online? In the largest investigation of its kind, we administered an assessment to 3,446 high school students. Equipped with a live Internet connection, students responded to six constructed-response tasks. Students struggled on all of them. Asked to investigate a site claiming to “disseminate factual reports” on climate science, 96% never learned about the organization’s ties to the fossil fuel industry. Two-thirds were unable to distinguish news stories from ads on a popular website’s homepage. Over half believed that an anonymously posted Facebook video, shot in Russia, provided “strong evidence” of U.S. voter fraud. Instead of investigating the organization or group behind a site, students were often duped by weak signs of credibility: a website’s “look”, its top-level domain, the content on its About page, and the sheer quantity of information it provided. The study’s sample reflected the demographic profile of high school students in the United States, and a multilevel regression model explored whether scores varied by student characteristics. Findings revealed differences in student abilities by grade level, self-reported grades, locality, socioeconomic status, race, maternal education, and free/reduced price lunch status. Taken together, these findings reveal an urgent need to prepare students to thrive in a world in which information flows ceaselessly across their screens.

Introduction Russian troll farms sow disinformation. Fake news runs amok on social media. Bots impersonate real people. Real people assume false identities. How do we know what’s true? The only thing certain in our digital age is our uncertainty. This confusion impairs our ability to make wise, fact-based decisions that shape our nation’s future. What has been the educational response to this predicament? The most common approaches—“media literacy,” “news literacy,” “digital literacy,” and even that catch-all, “critical thinking"—share a commitment to teaching people how to tell truth from fiction, recognize hoaxes, and practice caution before passing along dubious content to family and friends. Are these approaches effective in helping today’s college students make thoughtful choices about what to believe? The Study To address this question, we surveyed 263 college sophomores, juniors, and seniors at a large state university on the East Coast. On one task, students evaluated the trustworthiness of a “news story” that came from a satirical website. On a second task, students evaluated the website of a group claiming to sponsor “nonpartisan research.” In fact the site was created by a Washington, D.C. public relations firm run by a former corporate lobbyist. For both tasks, students had a live internet connection and were instructed to “use any online resources” to make their evaluations. The Results Students struggled. They employed inefficient strategies that made them vulnerable to forces, whether satirical or malevolent, that threaten informed citizenship. • Over two-thirds never identified the “news story” as satirical. • Ninety-five percent never located the PR firm behind the supposedly “nonpartisan” website. Often students: • Focused exclusively on the website or prompt, rarely consulting the broader web • Trusted how a site presented itself on its About page • Applied out-of-date and in some cases incorrect strategies (such as accepting or rejecting a site because of its top-level domain) • Attributed undue weight to easily manipulated signals of credibility—such as an organization’s non-profit status, its links to authoritative sources, or “look” Students Learned What We Taught Them Alarmingly, students’ approach was consistent with guidelines that can be found on many college and university websites. Sometimes these materials are just plain wrong. Sometimes they are incomplete. Sometimes they are so inconsistent that they offer scant guidance for navigating the treacherous terrain of today’s internet. Educational institutions must do a better job helping students become discerning consumers of digital information. Our society and its democratic institutions depend on it.

Many school districts strive to achieve high mathematics achievement and equitable outcomes. This study examines the work of Gateside district, an urban district that had made great progress in the enactment of equity minded policies such as de-tracking and the availability of high-level mathematics to all students. A detailed, case study of teaching and learning in the high school mathematics classrooms showed that the equity focused work of the teachers and district leaders was compromised by the narrow mathematics standards that informed the tasks used in classrooms. The prevalence of narrow tasks led students to develop binary perceptions of each other, revealing a fundamental tension between narrow content standards and equitable outcomes.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) high school students face challenges that impede their academic, social, and emotional well-being. School policies that provide resources and protections for LGBT students mitigate these challenges and lead to better outcomes for LGBT students. At the same time, LGBT individuals face challenges in sectors like employment protection and hate crime prevalence, and many states have passed laws that expand protections for these adults. This paper aims to investigate the relationship between state-level, LGBT anti-discrimination policies, and high school student well-being by analyzing patterns of policy diffusion and the policies’ effects on four measures of students’ wellbeing: self-reported (1) experiences with bullying at school, (2) cyberbullying, (3) school absences due to feeling unsafe at school, and (4) grades. Using data from the Centers for Disease Control’s Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System and linear regression analysis with time and state fixed effects, the results of this analysis provide evidence on the benefits of expansive civil rights legislation for LGBT individuals and the spread of its externalities to students in the U.S. schools.

Introduction In a digital age, being an informed citizen draws on the ability to locate trustworthy information and determine its reliability. Sites of varied quality flood our screens. Can young people today tell fact from fiction online? Can they distinguish between dubious and credible sources? Recent evidence suggests not. In 2018 and 2019, our team administered an assessment of online reasoning to 3,446 high school students across the country and found they were vexed by even basic evaluations of digital sources. A Different Approach How can we help students become smarter consumers of digital information? To develop a roadmap, we observed fact checkers at the nation’s leading news outlets and distilled their strategies into an instructional approach we call Civic Online Reasoning (COR)—the ability to search for, evaluate, and verify social and political information. MediaWise In 2018, the Stanford History Education Group (SHEG) teamed with the Poynter Institute and the Local Media Association to create MediaWise, an initiative supported by Google.org. We worked alongside classroom teachers to develop curriculum for teaching the skills of Civic Online Reasoning. A pilot study in a Northern California school district showed modest but promising gains. We fine-tuned our approach and then conducted a full-scale experiment with students in a large Midwestern school district. Compared with students in regular classrooms, students in COR classrooms improved significantly in their ability to evaluate online sources. COR Curriculum The COR curriculum is available for free at cor.stanford.edu. The suite of lessons can be implemented as a full curriculum or taught as a series of stand-alone lessons. Our materials are accompanied by instructional videos introducing the approach, easy-to-use assessments for tracking students’ progress, and a ten-episode video series, Navigating Digital Information, by noted author and YouTube star John Green. What’s at Stake The threat to democracy from a digitally credulous citizenry is nothing less than an issue of national defense. Facing this challenge will require a renewed educational commitment that acknowledges the depth of the problem and meets it with vigor and resolve. We offer this curriculum as a start in that direction.

Research shows a dot-org domain is a weak sign of credibility for evaluating online information, and yet is widely thought to be a useful signal. This potential to mislead internet users is particularly concerning when it comes to hate groups. We sought to understand the scope and scale of this issue. We set a sample size of n =100 websites from the Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC’s) list of over 10221 hate groups operating in the United States in 2018 (https://www.splcenter.org/hate-map). We sought to discover the prevalence of the dot-org domain among the various groups appearing on the SPLC list.

In November 2016, the Stanford History Education Group released a study showing that young people lacked basic skills of digital evaluation. Since then, a whole host of efforts—including legislative initiatives in 18 states—have sought to address this problem. From June 2018 to May 2019, we administered an assessment to 3,446 students, a national sample that matches the demographic profile of high school students in the United States. The six exercises in our assessment gauged students’ ability to evaluate digital sources on the open internet. The results—if they can be summarized in a word—are troubling: On one task, students evaluated a grainy video claiming to show ballot stuffing in the 2016 Democratic primaries (the video was actually shot in Russia). Fifty-two percent believed it constituted “strong evidence” of voter fraud in the U.S. Among more than 3,000 responses, only three students tracked down the source of the video, even though a quick search turns up a variety of articles exposing the ruse. Asked to evaluate Slate’s home page, where some tiles are news stories and others are ads (set off by the words “Sponsored Content”), two-thirds of students couldn’t tell the difference. Students displayed a troubling tendency to accept websites at face value. Ninety-six percent failed to consider why ties between a climate change website and the fossil fuel industry might lessen that website’s credibility. Instead of investigating who was behind the site, students focused on superficial markers of credibility: the site’s aesthetics, its top-level domain, or how it portrayed itself on the About page. Nearly all students floundered. Ninety percent received no credit on four of six tasks. Reliable information is to civic health what proper sanitation and potable water are to public health. A polluted information supply imperils our nation’s civic health. We need high-quality digital literacy curricula, validated by rigorous research, to guarantee the vitality of American democracy. Education moves slowly. Technology doesn’t. If we don’t act with urgency, our students’ ability to engage in civic life will be the casualty.

Although most teachers adapt curriculum, we know little about teachers’ rationales for modifying materials, how these rationales align with actual modifications, nor whether any patterns exist in the modifications that teachers make. This is especially the case in history/social studies, where research on curriculum is scant and research on teacher adaptation of curriculum is virtually non-existent. This paper addresses that gap. We report the results of a large-scale survey on curriculum use with over 1,900 history teachers. The online survey focused on how and why teachers use and adapt lesson materials from a free online history curriculum and prompted teachers to upload examples of curriculum materials they had modified. We found that individual differences among teachers correlated with particular types of modifications. Moreover, we found that teachers were motivated to modify materials to address their students’ needs, and that their modifications rarely affected the core structure—or theory of content—of the lessons. We argue that such alignment between teachers and curricular materials represents an example of curricular fit. We discuss what curricular design features may have contributed to the high level of curricular fit among users as well as the implications of this construct for curriculum implementation efforts across subject areas.

This article reports a validity study of History Assessments of Thinking (HATs), which are short, constructed-response assessments of historical thinking. In particular, this study focuses on aspects of cognitive validity, which is an examination of whether assessments tap the intended constructs. Think-aloud interviews with 26 high school students were used to examine the thinking elicited by eight HATs and multiple-choice versions of these tasks. Results showed that although both HATs and multiple-choice items tapped historical thinking processes, HATs better reflected student proficiency in historical thinking than their multiple-choice counterparts. Item format also influenced the thinking elicited, with multiple-choice items eliciting more instances of construct-irrelevant reasoning than the constructed-response versions. Implications for history assessment are discussed.

This study compares how professional fact checkers, historians, and first year college students evaluated online information and presents the strategies fact checkers used to efficiently and effectively find trustworthy information.

This paper sets out the place of the academic library within the digital-era developments of open access to research and scholarship. It analyzes how this development, now that open access is becoming a scholarly norm and common goal for scholarly publishing, is taking two forms, both of which are about making the move, if not a flip, from the subscription model for the circulation of journals to that of open access. The paper sets out the terms and instances of the two paths to open access. The one is a commercialization of open access publishing dominated by the large corporate academic publishers that are pursuing open access on their own terms through the article processing charge (APC) and in relation to the acquisition and development of scholarly communication infrastructure. The other, older tradition, if still on a smaller scale, is one of cooperation and collaboration, growing out of the commons that the library has always represented, involving libraries, journals, and archives, as well as open source tool and platform development. There is some crossover between the two paths, between library consortia and corporate publishers, and this paper encourages librarians to consider how they might take advantage of the market for publishing services that the two paths are creating amid the move to universal open access as a scholarly norm.

A very brief response to the question of "what comes after postmodernism,” which is the title of a special issue of Educational Philosophy and Theory commemorating the journal's fiftieth anniversary. The response takes up Frederic Jameson’s "political form of postmodernism” involving “a global cognitive mapping” that, in my case, entails supporting the publication and sharing of that cognitive activity among my colleagues on that global scale.

Objective To​ ​investigate​ ​the​ ​nature​ ​of​ ​physicians’​ ​use​ ​of​ ​research​ ​evidence​ ​in​ ​experimental​ ​conditions​ ​of open​ ​access​ ​to​ ​inform​ ​training​ ​and​ ​policy. Design This​ ​qualitative​ ​study​ ​was​ ​a​ ​component​ ​of​ ​a​ ​larger​ ​mixed-methods​ ​initiative​ ​that​ ​provided​ ​336 physicians​ ​with​ ​relatively​ ​complete​ ​access​ ​to​ ​research​ ​literature​ ​via​ ​PubMed​ ​and​ ​UpToDate,​ ​for one​ ​year​ ​via​ ​an​ ​online​ ​portal,​ ​with​ ​their​ ​usage​ ​recorded​ ​in​ ​web​ ​logs.​ ​Using​ ​a​ ​semi-structured interview​ ​protocol,​ ​a​ ​subset​ ​of​ ​38​ ​physician​ ​participants​ ​were​ ​interviewed​ ​about​ ​their​ ​use​ ​of research​ ​articles​ ​in​ ​general​ ​and​ ​were​ ​probed​ ​about​ ​their​ ​reasons​ ​for​ ​accessing​ ​specific​ ​articles​ ​as identified​ ​through​ ​their​ ​web​ ​logs.​ ​Transcripts​ ​were​ ​analyzed​ ​using​ ​a​ ​general​ ​inductive​ ​approach. Setting Physician​ ​participants​ ​were​ ​recruited​ ​from​ ​and​ ​registered​ ​in​ ​the​ ​United​ ​States​ ​(U.S.). Participants Thirty-eight​ ​physicians​ ​from​ ​16​ ​U.S.​ ​states,​ ​engaged​ ​in​ ​22​ ​medical​ ​specialties,​ ​possessing​ ​more than​ ​one​ ​year​ ​of​ ​experience​ ​post-residency​ ​training​ ​participated. Results Twenty-six​ ​participants​ ​attested​ ​to​ ​the​ ​value​ ​of​ ​consulting​ ​research​ ​literature​ ​within​ ​the​ ​context of​ ​the​ ​study​ ​by​ ​making​ ​reference​ ​to​ ​their​ ​roles​ ​as​ ​clinicians,​ ​educators,​ ​researchers,​ ​learners, administrators,​ ​and​ ​advocates.​ ​The​ ​physicians​ ​reported​ ​previously​ ​encountering​ ​what​ ​they experienced​ ​as​ ​a​ ​prohibitive​ ​paywall​ ​barrier​ ​to​ ​the​ ​research​ ​literature​ ​and​ ​other​ ​frustrations​ ​with the​ ​nature​ ​of​ ​information​ ​systems,​ ​such​ ​as​ ​the​ ​need​ ​for​ ​passwords. Conclusions The​ ​findings,​ ​against​ ​the​ ​backdrop​ ​of​ ​growing​ ​open​ ​access​ ​to​ ​biomedical​ ​research,​ ​indicate​ ​that​ ​a minority​ ​of​ ​physicians,​ ​at​ ​least​ ​initially,​ ​is​ ​likely​ ​to​ ​seek​ ​out​ ​and​ ​use​ ​research​ ​and​ ​do​ ​so​ ​in​ ​a variety​ ​of​ ​common​ ​roles.​ ​Physicians’​ ​use​ ​of​ ​research​ ​in​ ​these​ ​roles​ ​has​ ​not​ ​traditionally​ ​been​ ​part of​ ​their​ ​training​ ​nor​ ​part​ ​of​ ​the​ ​considerations​ ​for​ ​open​ ​access​ ​policies.​ ​The​ ​findings​ ​have implications​ ​for​ ​educational​ ​and​ ​policy​ ​initiatives​ ​directed​ ​toward​ ​increasing​ ​the​ ​effectiveness​ ​of this​ ​access​ ​to​ ​and​ ​use​ ​of​ ​research​ ​in​ ​improving​ ​the​ ​quality​ ​of​ ​health​ ​care.