Defeating misinformation through classroom deliberation

A recent survey of teachers’ experiences of conspiracy theories in schools suggests that they are widespread but that teachers do not feel they have access to a range of successful strategies to deal with them. Many of these issues are simultaneously sensitive, polarising, controversial, and overtly political, but the meagre evidence base suggests that challenging such views head on can be counter-productive. Many of the beliefs of those advocating conspiracy theories are based on misinformation but simply teaching skills for media literacy seems an unlikely solution because these beliefs are also integrally bound up with a political world-view and an emergent political identity. Some critics have observed that conspiracy theories represent a form of ‘crippled epistemology’ and this chapter develops the argument that part of the educational solution is to engage afresh with questions of epistemology, to help young people think critically about what constitutes a useful set of criteria for evaluating conflicting political beliefs. The chapter suggests that part of the solution is to build routines in the classroom where the whole class takes responsibility for pursuing a deliberative culture, so that students become as familiar with challenging and critiquing one another as they are with the more traditional skills of speaking and listening. By testing, exploring and evaluating arguments collaboratively in the context of building knowledge of politics and the nature of political knowledge and beliefs, students can become familiar with the epistemological foundations of political knowledge and the pragmatic refinement of political positions through democratic processes of deliberation.

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