How can history teachers respond to post-truth?

Abstract

History teachers currently grapple with the impact of misinformation and political polarisation on their discipline. The concerns about these two factors have become more prominent as forms of inequality have widened significantly in the wake of responses to COVID-19. These shifts have taken place at around the same time as an authoritarian-leaning trend has begun to develop, which is underpinned by the assumption that historical and moral decline might be arrested by a sudden and radical shift in policy and leadership. Therefore, the core question of this Miniature is: How can teachers integrate historical consciousness as part of teaching and learning, to respond to post-truth? The first section will contextualise post-truth conditions, while the second will sketch the curriculum context, and a third will suggest how historical consciousness might be applied using a literacy focus, as part of mapping elements to a teaching context in New South Wales, Australia.