The project "Διάλογος – dialogue down the post-truth hole: programmes and tools for digging through information and beliefs in the post-truth era" aims at fighting disinformation and false beliefs while promoting critical and scientific reasoning for a general improvement of the EU society. With the old-but-gold Lisbon goal of a strong knowledge-based economy in mind, the consortium aims at developing and validating Critical Thinking-based curricula for HE and AE in 6 EU countries – Greece, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, Bulgaria and Romania – with a view to scaling-up the process of adoption to the whole EU. Via a cross-contamination between modern Critical Thinking programmes, coming from English-speaking countries, and the philosophical tradition of dialogue introduced by Socrates, an innovative, enriched and multidisciplinary form of education is shaped. After a preliminary research phase, aimed at analyzing the state-of-the-art of Critical Thinking teaching in Europe, a key design phase will define learning outcomes, learning units and correspondent assessment tools for undergraduates and graduates in Soft Sciences, on one hand, and adult learners attending a different kind of programmes, on the other hand. A rigorous experimentation plan will test the effectiveness and soundness of the curricula on large cohorts of learners, before validating and disseminating officially the results. An extensive Dissemination Plan, adopting a sort of “Guerrilla Thinking” approach, will be implemented. The Δ-game, aiming at deconstructing beliefs and stimulating complex reasoning, will be played during events with key stakeholders. Science Citizen Δ-Living Labs, involving experts and citizens in analysing daily problems within a scientific approach, will work as inquiry-based instruction for adults and key dissemination and awareness raising events. The ultimate goal of Δ-project is “to make the delta”, i.e. to make the difference between the current, widespread, superficial, a-critical thinking about big and little issues, and a deeper, more complex and productive style of reasoning, able to generate new ideas, resolving conflicts, enriching the involved perspectives and deliver innovation for the benefit of the whole community. To pursue this goal, the Open Innovation paradigm is adopted, and the Quadruple Helix model is applied: while focusing on Higher Education learners and adults in lifelong learning as key change-makers in short and mid-term, the Δ-project looks at government and business representatives as key players for long-lasting improvement at system level. The last project output, the Policy Paper, will provide educational stakeholders with practical guidance for adopting, adapting and further developing the Δ-programmes, in the (true) belief that providing people with the ability of thinking critically is a strong and longlasting form of empowerment, and empowering people means to empower the whole society.
The Δ-project aimed at the development, pilot experimentation and validation, of Critical Thinking-based curricula for HE and AE in 6 EU countries –Greece, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, Bulgaria and Romania – with a view to scaling-up the process of adoption to the whole EU. The overarching objective of the project was to deliver educational material, and methodologies that contribute to the fighting against information disorders, while promoting critical and scientific reasoning. While the core target group were students from Higher Education Institutes, the partnership drew also attention to Adult Education, as a potentially conducive field of experimentation of CT-based learning.
In 2016, the Oxford Dictionary made Post-truth the word of the year, defining it as a situation whereby "objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief". Societal, cultural and technological shifts, render this situation unique in the history of European societies. Just to state the obvious, social media and their echo chambers, augment the erosion of global intellectual qualities, such as fairness, good reasons, argumentation. Political phenomena, such as anti-migrant attitudes, hate speech, conspiracy theories, and the like, are also related with the cause and effects of the post-truth condition. This tide against the value of truth-seeking, which is also a challenge for the democratic rule, could be effectively mitigated through a more systematic, and dialogical cultivation of Critical Thinking, particularly among European youth. EU's recommendations and guidelines also point to this direction, both in what regards key competencies in the context of knowledge economy, and in what regards the vision for a more inclusive society.