A theoretical model for stimulating epistemic growth in learners

People today must navigate an overwhelming flow of information, much of it misleading or false, while contending with deep political divides. In this post-truth era—where emotion and ideology often overshadow facts—the challenge is not only identifying reliable information, but also critically evaluating it while remaining open to diverse perspectives. Addressing this challenge requires effective epistemic thinking: a constellation of beliefs, knowledge, and dispositions that support critical engagement, truth-seeking, and meta-level awareness of knowledge structures. Despite growing recognition of its importance, no comprehensive framework currently specifies how epistemic interventions target the mechanisms underlying epistemic thinking. Moreover, existing models often operate at different levels of granularity, making it difficult to situate interventions within a broader process of epistemic growth. In this article, we address these gaps by proposing a theoretical model that integrates research on epistemic virtues, beliefs, and metacognitive knowledge and skills, alongside interventions designed to enhance them. We then demonstrate how this model can be extended to inform other frameworks of thinking and thriving in the modern world. Finally, we outline generative directions for future research, including applications to both general and discipline-specific learning.