Sarit Barzilai
I am a Professor in the Department of Learning and Instructional Sciences in the Faculty of Education of the University of Haifa.
My primary research interests are understanding and fostering learners' digital literacy and epistemic thinking (i.e., thinking about knowledge and knowing) so that they can cope with the complexities of twenty-first century networked societies. I study how learners evaluate and integrate online information sources that have diverse trustworthiness and that present conflicting claims and perspectives. I also study how learners’ understandings of knowledge and knowing come into play and develop as they engage with multiple sources and deal with epistemic disagreements.
My current research addresses three interrelated goals:
Developing an account of epistemic performance and growth that can inform educational efforts to promote learners' ways of knowing in a digital world.
Designing and investigating learning environments and scaffolds that support reasoning with and about diverse information sources.
Developing ways to educationally to address the current "post-truth" climate.
Photo by Avigail Piperno-Beer
New: Fighting Fake News
Following the brutal Hamas terror attack on October 7th and the ensuing war between Israel and Hamas, there has been a surge of disinformation about the attack and the war. This disinformation denies or distorts actual events, seeds fear and panic, and inflames polarization. In my group, we have been developing and disseminating learning materials for teachers and learners to foster resilience against war disinformation and to promote reliance on reliable information.
Click here to download the materials: https://edtech.haifa.ac.il/fakenews/
חדש: נלחמות ונלחמים בפייק ניוז
בעקבות מתקפת הטרור האכזרית של החמאס ב-7 באוקטובר והמלחמה בין ישראל לחמאס, הרשת מוצפת במידע כוזב ומטעה על המתקפה והמלחמה. דיסאינפורמציה זו מכחישה או מעוותת את האירועים, זורעת פחד ובהלה, ומלבה את הקיטוב. בקבוצת המחקר שלי, אנו מפתחות ומפיצות חומרי למידה עבור מורים.ות ולומדים.ות כדי לטפח חוסן נגד דיסאינפורמציה וכדי לקדם הסתמכות על מידע אמין.
להורדת החומרים לחצו כאן: https://edtech.haifa.ac.il/fakenews/
Recent publications:
Dishon G., Barzilai S., & Verissimo-Yanai, J. (2023). Grasping psychological evidence: Integrating evidentiary practices in psychology instruction. Cognition and Instruction
Barzilai. S., Mor-Hagani S., Abed F., Tal-Savir D., Goldik N., Talmon I, & Davidow O. (2023). Misinformation Is Contagious: Middle school students learn how to evaluate and share information responsibly through a digital game. Computers & Education, 202, 104832.
Abed, F., & Barzilai, S. (2023). Can students evaluate scientific YouTube videos? Examining students' strategies and criteria for evaluating videos versus webpages on climate change. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 39(2), 558-577.
Barzilai, S., Tal-Savir, D., Abed, F., Mor-Hagani, S., & Zohar, A. R. (2023). Mapping multiple documents: From constructing multiple document models to argumentative writing. Reading and Writing, 36, 809-847.
Mor-Hagani, S., & Barzilai, S. (2022). The multifaceted nature of teachers' epistemic growth: Exploring teachers' perspectives on growth in epistemic performance. Teaching and Teacher Education, 115, 103714.
Chinn, C. A., Barzilai, S., & Duncan, R. G. (2021). Education for a “post-truth” world: New directions for research and practice. Educational Researcher, 50(1).
Barzilai, S., Mor-Hagani, S., Zohar, A. R., Shlomi-Elooz, T., & Ben-Yishai, R. (2020). Making sources visible: Promoting multiple document literacy with digital epistemic scaffolds. Computers & Education, 157, 103980.
Barzilai, S., & Chinn, C. A. (2020). A review of educational responses to the "post-truth" condition: Four lenses on addressing "post-truth" problems. Educational Psychologist, 55(3).
Chinn, C. A., Barzilai, S., & Duncan, R. G. (2020). Disagreeing about how to know: The instructional value of explorations into knowing. Educational Psychologist, 55(3).
Barzilai, S., Thomm, E., & Shlomi-Elooz, T. (2020). Dealing with disagreement: The roles of topic familiarity and disagreement explanation in reasoning about conflicting expert claims and sources. Learning and Instruction, 69, 101367.
Department of Learning and Instructional Sciences
Faculty of Education
University of Haifa
199 Aba Khoushy Ave., Mount Carmel, Haifa, 3498838, Israel
Room 523, Education and Sciences Building