How might we educate our young people so that they are better equipped to navigate a world awash with disinformation? Lifelong learning for a Post-truth World explores this vexed and complex educational challenge.
Rosemary Hipkins draws on significant moments of her own learning to argue that adults (teachers and others) cannot adequately support the development of young people’s meaning-making capabilities unless they are paying critical attention to their own meaning-making. She argues that a lifelong quest to explore the ways in which knowledge is generated and validated is an important personal and professional commitment for the collective well-being of both people and planet.
This quest is greatly aided by having access to more than one knowledge system (e.g. both science and an indigenous knowledge system). The argument is mainly set in the twin contexts of ongoing science discoveries and recent science education research, but it has relevance across the breadth of the school curriculum.
Dr Rosemary Hipkins, MNZM, has recently retired from the New Zealand Council for Educational Research (NZCER) with Emeritus status. Her research has focused on the complex intersection between curriculum and assessment, particularly in science education. Her recent work has explored ways to bring different knowledge systems together to enrich and deepen learning.