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Finding Common Ground

A former K-5 public school principal turned author, presenter, and leadership coach, Peter DeWitt provides insights and advice for education leaders. Former superintendent Michael Nelson is a frequent contributor. Read more from this blog.

Social Studies Opinion

The Need for Media Literacy and Civics Education Isn’t Just for Students

By Peter DeWitt — February 03, 2021 1 min read
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Truth Decay - A Seat at the Table

On Thursday, Jan. 28, for Education Week’s A Seat at the Table, I moderated a chat with Jennifer Kavanagh and Alice Huguet from the Rand Corp. Kavanagh is the director of the Strategy, Doctrine, and Resources Program in the RAND Arroyo Center and a senior political scientist at the RAND Corp. She also leads RAND’s Countering Truth Decay initiative, a portfolio of projects exploring the diminishing reliance on facts and analysis in U.S. political and civil discourse.

Huguet is a policy researcher at RAND. She is interested in K-12 educational policies that influence the academic and life opportunities of students attending urban schools. Huguet’s research explores a variety of topics, including evidence-based decision-making; social and emotional learning; media-literacy education; alternative teacher-preparation programs; school leadership; and data- and instructional-coaching.

During the conversation, we discussed truth versus facts; the need for media literacy and civics education, not just for students but also adults; and the history of truth decay in our country from the very beginning. Click here to register and watch the show on-demand. It is well worth the hour.

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The opinions expressed in Peter DeWitt’s Finding Common Ground are strictly those of the author(s) and do not reflect the opinions or endorsement of Editorial Projects in Education, or any of its publications.

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