Åsa Wikforss criticized for lack of source criticism in the book "Alternative facts"

In the mentioned book Alternative facts: about knowledge and its enemies (2017), the author Åsa Wikforss, professor of philosophy and soon a new member of the Swedish Academy, wants to get to the bottom with fact and knowledge resistance and show the importance of critical thinking.

Now a chapter on the school's role receives sharp criticism by Magnus Hultén, assistant professor at Linköping University, in a debate article in Svenska Dagbladet. Among other things, the chapter contains several factual errors.

- She does not keep track of when different knowledge measurements have been made, what years they have been made and how long they have been going. If you want to pull very large gears on Pisa measurements and their cases then you have to have good feet, Magnus Hultén tells the Culture News.

Åsa Wikforss confirms that there are factual errors but that these have been corrected in the next edition of the book.

- There are a couple of minor factual errors, and it shows my main points in the book, that it is easy to be wrong and it is important that we jointly review and then correct. These little factual errors that I have discovered myself are corrected in the next edition. That's what you have to do, says Åsa Wikforss to the Culture News.

In the book you want to deal with alternative facts, how do you see that you yourself are covered with factual errors?

- It's just as I say, we can be wrong. And then we need each other to find those flaws and so we fix it. But that does not matter for the main point is correct and that is that critical thinking, which we must teach our students in school, requires factual knowledge.

In this chapter, Åsa Wikfors criticizes the constructivist pedagogy that involves an increased focus on the student's own knowledge-seeking and where the teacher should take a step back. According to theory, knowledge should be regarded as something that man can create in interaction with his or her surroundings, rather than in the form of facts that are mainly transmitted, for example from a teacher to a student.

- What I'm really upset about is that Swedish educational researchers have for decades held a teaching theory that lacks scientific basis. It's a theory that you know doesn't work and that hits students, especially the weaker ones, hard, says Åsa Wikforss.

According to Magnus Hultén, Åsa Wikforss gives a misleading picture of constructivism as he thinks that she mixes different forms of constructivism.

- She has a very broad definition of constructivism and takes extreme applications of this and calls it constructivism and I don't think you can do that.

It is a picture that Åsa Wikforss does not share.

- No, of course I don't. I give very clear definitions. I also distinguish between three different kinds of constructivism, not even the educators usually do and I clearly see what forms of constructivism I criticize.

During Friday, Åsa takes the chair of Vikfors number seven in the Swedish Academy, but that the debate article would in some way affect this, she firmly refuses.

- There is no argument in this article worth worrying about, says Åsa Wikforss.