Individual truth judgments or purposeful, collective sensemaking? Rethinking science education’s response to the post-truth era

Science education is likely to respond to the post-truth era by focusing on how science education can help individuals use scientists’ epistemological tools to tell what is true. This strategy, by itself, is inadequate for three reasons. First, science does not actually offer foundational truth, and incautious assertions about scientific truth can make the problems of the post-truth era worse. Second, scientific knowledge offers only part of the solution to personal and policy problems and must be reconstructed in context. Third, people think about and act on science in social context—both as members of their social and cultural groups and with other members of those groups. Taken together, these arguments suggest that we should be focusing on a different question: How can science education help people work together to make appropriate use of science in social context?