Bio

Sam Wineburg is the Margaret Jacks Professor of Education and, by courtesy, of History & American Studies, Emeritus, at Stanford University. Educated at Brown and Berkeley, he holds a doctorate in Psychological Studies in Education from Stanford and an honorary doctorate from Sweden's Umeå University. In 2002, Wineburg founded the Stanford History Education Group (inquirygroup.org), whose curriculum and assessments have been downloaded over 16 million times, making it one of the largest providers of free curriculum in the world. Since 2016 his research has focused on how people judge the credibility of digital content, research that has been reported in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, Time Magazine, BBC, and Die Zeit, and translated into dozens of languages. His articles and commentaries have appeared in such diverse outlets as Cognitive Science, Journal of American History, Smithsonian Magazine, The New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today and the Los Angeles Times. In 2002 his book, "Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts: Charting the Future of Teaching the Past" won the Frederic W. Ness Award from the Association of American Colleges and Universities for work that makes the most important contribution to the "improvement of Liberal Education and understanding the Liberal Arts." In 2013, he was named the Obama-Nehru Distinguished Chair by the US-India Fulbright Commission and spent four months crisscrossing India giving lectures about his work, and in 2020, his work on digital literacy was honored by UNESCO's "Global Media and Information" award. His latest book, with co-author Mike Caulfield, is "Verified: How to Think Straight, Get Duped Less, and Make Better Decisions About What to Believe Online" (University of Chicago Press, 2023).

Academic Appointments

  • Emeritus Faculty, Acad Council, Graduate School of Education

Administrative Appointments

  • Director, Stanford History Education Group (2002 - 2023)

Honors & Awards

  • Global Media & Information Literacy Award, UNESCO (2020)
  • William and Edwyna Gilbert Award, American Historical Association (2019)
  • Inducted, National Academy of Education (2015)
  • Honorary Doctorate, Umea University, Sweden (2014)
  • Nehru-Obama Distinguished Chair, US-India Fulbright Commission (2013)
  • Best of the Best Book Award, Association of American University Presses & the American Library Association (2012)
  • James Harvey Robinson Award, American Historical Association (2012)
  • Distinguished Lecturer, Organization of American Historians (2009)
  • Frederic W. Ness Book Award, Association of American Colleges and Universities (2002)

Boards, Advisory Committees, Professional Organizations

  • Member, Advisory Board, Center for the Study of Historical Consciousness, Univ. of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC (2018 - Present)
  • Member, Advisory Board, How People Learn, Targeted Report for Teachers, National Research Council Committee (2018 - Present)
  • Member, Editorial Board, Cognition and Instruction, Journal of the Learning Sciences (2018 - Present)
  • Trustee, National Council for History Education (NCHE) (2018 - Present)
  • Fulbright-Nehru Distinguished Chair, Univ. of North Bengal, India (2014 - Present)
  • Assistant Professor to Professor, Educational Psychology, & Professor of History, Univ. of Washington (1989 - 2002)

Program Affiliations

  • American Studies

Professional Education

  • PhD, Stanford University, Psychological Studies in Education
  • BA, University of California/Berkeley, History of Religion, summa cum laude
  • ., Brown University
  • L.D.H. Doctor of Humane Letters, Umeå University

Contact

  • Academic
    wineburg@stanford.edu
    University - Emeritus faculty Department: Graduate School of Education Position: Emeritus Faculty, Acad Council
    • School of Education
    • 485 Lasuen Mall
    • Stanford University
    • Stanford,  California  94305-3096 
    (650) 725-7412 (fax)

Additional Info

Links

Research Interests

  • Assessment, Testing and Measurement
  • Civic Education
  • Curriculum and Instruction
  • History
  • Teachers and Teaching
  • Technology and Education

Current Research and Scholarly Interests

Sam Wineburg's work engages questions of identity and history in modern society: how today's youth use the past to construct individual and collective identities. His current work focuses on how young people learn about world through digital media; specifically, in the digital Wild West what do they decide to believe or reject? Over the last twenty-five years his interests have spanned a wide terrain, from how adolescents and professional historians interpret primary sources to issues of teacher assessment and teacher community in the workplace. His book, Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts, won the 2002 Frederic W. Ness Award from the Association of American Colleges and Universities for the book "that best illuminates the goals and practices of a contemporary liberal education." From 2007-2009 he was the Executive Director of the Department of Education's National Clearinghouse for History Education, a collaboration between George Mason University, Stanford, and the American Historical Association. With the late Roy N. Rosenzweig, he created the award-winning website, historicalthinkingmatters.org. In 2002 he founded the Stanford History Education Group, a research and development outfit dedicated to improving history instruction in the US and abroad, whose materials have been downloaded over 16 million times. In 2013 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Sweden's Umeå University and the following year he was named the Obama-Nehru Distinguished Chair by the US-India Fulbright Commission. In 2015 he was inducted into the National Academy of Education. And in 2020, he was presented with UNESCO's "Global Media and Information" Award for his work on digital literacy.

2024-25 Courses

Stanford Advisees

All Publications

  • Toolbox of individual-level interventions against online misinformation. Nature human behaviour Kozyreva, A., Lorenz-Spreen, P., Herzog, S. M., Ecker, U. K., Lewandowsky, S., Hertwig, R., Ali, A., Bak-Coleman, J., Barzilai, S., Basol, M., Berinsky, A. J., Betsch, C., Cook, J., Fazio, L. K., Geers, M., Guess, A. M., Huang, H., Larreguy, H., Maertens, R., Panizza, F., Pennycook, G., Rand, D. G., Rathje, S., Reifler, J., Schmid, P., Smith, M., Swire-Thompson, B., Szewach, P., van der Linden, S., Wineburg, S. 2024

    Abstract

    The spread of misinformation through media and social networks threatens many aspects of society, including public health and the state of democracies. One approach to mitigating the effect of misinformation focuses on individual-level interventions, equipping policymakers and the public with essential tools to curb the spread and influence of falsehoods. Here we introduce a toolbox of individual-level interventions for reducing harm from online misinformation. Comprising an up-to-date account of interventions featured in 81 scientific papers from across the globe, the toolbox provides both a conceptual overview of nine main types of interventions, including their target, scope and examples, and a summary of the empirical evidence supporting the interventions, including the methods and experimental paradigms used to test them. The nine types of interventions covered are accuracy prompts, debunking and rebuttals, friction, inoculation, lateral reading and verification strategies, media-literacy tips, social norms, source-credibility labels, and warning and fact-checking labels.

    View details for DOI 10.1038/s41562-024-01881-0

    View details for PubMedID 38740990

  • Critical Ignoring as a Core Competence for Digital Citizens. Current directions in psychological science Kozyreva, A., Wineburg, S., Lewandowsky, S., Hertwig, R. 2023; 32 (1): 81-88

    Abstract

    Low-quality and misleading information online can hijack people's attention, often by evoking curiosity, outrage, or anger. Resisting certain types of information and actors online requires people to adopt new mental habits that help them avoid being tempted by attention-grabbing and potentially harmful content. We argue that digital information literacy must include the competence of critical ignoring-choosing what to ignore and where to invest one's limited attentional capacities. We review three types of cognitive strategies for implementing critical ignoring: self-nudging, in which one ignores temptations by removing them from one's digital environments; lateral reading, in which one vets information by leaving the source and verifying its credibility elsewhere online; and the do-not-feed-the-trolls heuristic, which advises one to not reward malicious actors with attention. We argue that these strategies implementing critical ignoring should be part of school curricula on digital information literacy. Teaching the competence of critical ignoring requires a paradigm shift in educators' thinking, from a sole focus on the power and promise of paying close attention to an additional emphasis on the power of ignoring. Encouraging students and other online users to embrace critical ignoring can empower them to shield themselves from the excesses, traps, and information disorders of today's attention economy.

    View details for DOI 10.1177/09637214221121570

    View details for PubMedID 37994317

    View details for PubMedCentralID PMC7615324

  • Verified: How to Think Straight, Get Duped Less, and Make Better Decisions about What to Believe Online Caulfield, M., Wineburg, S. University of Chicago Press. 2023
  • Lateral Reading on the Open Internet: A District-Wide Field Study in High School Government Classes JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY Wineburg, S., Breakstone, J., McGrew, S., Smith, M. D., Ortega, T. 2022

    View details for DOI 10.1037/edu0000740

    View details for Web of Science ID 000782235500001

  • Students' Civic Online Reasoning: A National Portrait EDUCATIONAL RESEARCHER Breakstone, J., Smith, M., Wineburg, S., Rapaport, A., Carle, J., Garland, M., Saavedra, A. 2021

    View details for DOI 10.3102/0013189X211017495

    View details for Web of Science ID 000656033800001

  • Lateral Reading and the Nature of Expertise: Reading Less and Learning More When Evaluating Digital Information TEACHERS COLLEGE RECORD Wineburg, S., Mcgrew, S. 2019; 121 (11)

    View details for Web of Science ID 000504403700002

  • Improving university students' web savvy: An intervention study BRITISH JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY McGrew, S., Smith, M., Breakstone, J., Ortega, T., Wineburg, S. 2019; 89 (3): 485–500

    View details for DOI 10.1111/bjep.12279

    View details for Web of Science ID 000482455500007

  • What's Difficult About Difficult History? Afterword TEACHING AND LEARNING THE DIFFICULT PAST: COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVES Wineburg, S., Gross, M. H., Terra, L. 2019: 290–92

    View details for Web of Science ID 000487736300020

  • Why we need a new approach to teaching digital literacy PHI DELTA KAPPAN Breakstone, J., McGrew, S., Smith, M., Ortega, T., Wineburg, S. 2018; 99 (6): 27–32

    View details for Web of Science ID 000429909200007

  • What Is Learned in College History Classes? JOURNAL OF AMERICAN HISTORY Wineburg, S., Smith, M., Breakstone, J. 2018; 104 (4): 983–93

    View details for DOI 10.1093/jahist/jax434

    View details for Web of Science ID 000427839100008

  • Can Students Evaluate Online Sources? Learning From Assessments of Civic Online Reasoning THEORY AND RESEARCH IN SOCIAL EDUCATION McGrew, S., Breakstone, J., Ortega, T., Smith, M., Wineburg, S. 2018; 46 (2): 165–93

    View details for DOI 10.1080/00933104.2017.1416320

    View details for Web of Science ID 000433032700001

  • Why Learn History (When It is Already on Your Phone) Wineburg, S. University of Chicago. 2018
  • Why historical thinking is not about history History News Wineburg, S. 2016; 71 (2): 13-16
  • Disciplinary Literacy in History A Toolkit for Digital Citizenship JOURNAL OF ADOLESCENT & ADULT LITERACY Wineburg, S., Reisman, A. 2015; 58 (8): 636-639

    View details for DOI 10.1002/jaal.410

    View details for Web of Science ID 000353969000004

  • Beyond the bubble in history/social studies assessments PHI DELTA KAPPAN Breakstone, J., Smith, M., Wineburg, S. 2013; 94 (5): 53-57

    View details for Web of Science ID 000314555500010

  • Undue Certainty: Where Howard Zinn's American Educator Wineburg, S. 2013; 36 (4): 27-34
  • Between Veritas and Communitas: Epistemic Switching in the Reading of Academic and Sacred History JOURNAL OF THE LEARNING SCIENCES Gottlieb, E., Wineburg, S. 2012; 21 (1): 84-129

    View details for DOI 10.1080/10508406.2011.582376

    View details for Web of Science ID 000302062000003

  • Reading like a historian: Teaching literacy in middle and high school history classrooms Wineburg, S. S., Martin, D., Monte-Sano, C. Teachers College Press. 2012
  • Sam Wineburg, critic of history education AMERICAN HISTORY Carlson, P., Wineburg, S. 2011; 46 (5): 28–29

    View details for Web of Science ID 000295420300013

  • Was Bloom's Taxonomy Pointed in the Wrong Direction? PHI DELTA KAPPAN Wineburg, S., Schneider, J. 2009; 91 (4): 56-61

    View details for Web of Science ID 000272686300012

  • Goodbye, Columbus SMITHSONIAN Wineburg, S. 2008; 39 (2): 98-?

    View details for Web of Science ID 000255268600027

  • Who is a famous American? Charting historical memory across the generations PHI DELTA KAPPAN Wineburg, S., Monte-Sano, C. 2008; 89 (9): 643-648

    View details for Web of Science ID 000255473000007

  • "Famous Americans": The changing pantheon of American heroes JOURNAL OF AMERICAN HISTORY Wineburg, S., Monte-Sano, C. 2008; 94 (4): 1186-1202

    View details for Web of Science ID 000255081400007

  • THE ROLE OF SUBJECT-MATTER KNOWLEDGE IN TEACHER ASSESSMENT ASSESSING TEACHERS FOR PROFESSIONAL CERTIFICATION Wineburg, S., Stake, R. E., Kushner, S., Ingvarson, L., Hattie, J. 2008; 11: 113–38

    View details for DOI 10.1016/S1474-7863(07)11005-X

    View details for Web of Science ID 000270979700006

  • Forrest gump and the future of teaching the past PHI DELTA KAPPAN Wineburg, S., Mosborg, S., Porat, D., Duncan, A. 2007; 89 (3): 168–77

    View details for DOI 10.1177/003172170708900305

    View details for Web of Science ID 000250566900004

  • Common belief and the cultural curriculum: An intergenerational study of historical consciousness AMERICAN EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH JOURNAL Wineburg, S., Mosborg, S., Porat, D., Duncan, A. 2007; 44 (1): 40-76

    View details for DOI 10.3102/0002831206298677

    View details for Web of Science ID 000245058100002

  • Comparative understanding of school subjects: Past, present, and future REVIEW OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH Stevens, R., Wineburg, S., Herrenkohl, L. R., Bell, P. 2005; 75 (2): 125-157

    View details for Web of Science ID 000230554200001

  • What does NCATE have to say to future history teachers? Not much PHI DELTA KAPPAN Wineburg, S. 2005; 86 (9): 658-665

    View details for Web of Science ID 000228736100009

  • Reading and rewriting history EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP Wineburg, S., Martin, D. 2004; 62 (1): 42-45

    View details for Web of Science ID 000223652300008

  • Crazy for history JOURNAL OF AMERICAN HISTORY Wineburg, S. 2004; 90 (4): 1401-1414

    View details for Web of Science ID 000220034500014

  • Slaves on screen: Film and historical vision. (Book Review) JOURNAL OF SOCIAL HISTORY Book Review Authored by: WINEBURG, S. 2002; 36 (1): 218-220

    View details for Web of Science ID 000178085400028

  • Toward a theory of teacher community TEACHERS COLLEGE RECORD Grossman, P., WINEBURG, S., Woolworth, S. 2001; 103 (6): 942-1012

    View details for Web of Science ID 000172707100002

  • Knowing, teaching, and learning history: National and international perspectives Stearns, P. N., Seixas, P. C., Wineburg, S. NYU Press. 2000
  • Historical thinking and other unnatural acts PHI DELTA KAPPAN Wineburg, S. 1999; 80 (7): 488–99

    View details for Web of Science ID 000078965600004

  • Reading Abraham Lincoln: An expert/expert study in the interpretation of historical texts COGNITIVE SCIENCE Wineburg, S. 1998; 22 (3): 319–46

    View details for DOI 10.1016/S0364-0213(99)80043-3

    View details for Web of Science ID 000076519000003

  • WRINKLES IN TIME AND PLACE - USING PERFORMANCE ASSESSMENTS TO UNDERSTAND THE KNOWLEDGE OF HISTORY TEACHERS AMERICAN EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH JOURNAL Wilson, S. M., WINEBURG, S. S. 1993; 30 (4): 729-769

    View details for Web of Science ID A1993NH86400004

  • MODELS OF WISDOM IN THE TEACHING OF HISTORY PHI DELTA KAPPAN WINEBURG, S. S., Wilson, S. M. 1988; 70 (1): 50-58

    View details for Web of Science ID A1988P961700012

  • Civic Preparation for the Digital Age: How College Students Evaluate Online Sources about Social and Political Issues JOURNAL OF HIGHER EDUCATION Breakstone, J., Smith, M., Ziv, N., Wineburg, S. 2022

    View details for DOI 10.1080/00221546.2022.2082783

    View details for Web of Science ID 000811670800001

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4838-1522