Sarah McGrew | �˻�ֱ�� College of Education

digital media literacy; civic education; history/social studies education; teacher education; educational technology and equity

Sarah McGrew is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning, Policy and Leadership in the College of Education at the University of �˻�ֱ��, College Park. She studies educational responses to the spread of online mis- and disinformation, focusing on how young people search for and evaluate online information on contentious topics and how schools can better support students to learn effective evaluation strategies.

Dr. McGrew has developed assessments of students’ online reasoning, conducted research on fact checkers’ strategies for evaluating digital content, tested curriculum designed to teach these strategies to secondary and college students, and developed teacher education efforts to better support teachers to learn to teach online evaluations. Dr. McGrew's research has been published in journals including Cognition and Instruction, Computers & Education, Teaching and Teacher Education, Teachers College Record, and Theory and Research in Social Education. Her current research focuses on three related questions: how best to support teachers to learn online reasoning themselves and prepare for teaching students, how to design lessons that are rooted in civic and community issues that students know and care about, and how to connect lessons on evaluating online information to a larger process of civic inquiry that includes discussing issues and taking informed action.

Dr. McGrew earned a B.A. in Political Science and Education from Swarthmore College and an M.A. and teacher certification in the Stanford Teacher Education Program. She taught high school history in Washington, D.C. for five years before returning to Stanford to complete her Ph.D. in Curriculum and Teacher Education.

Middle States Council for the Social Studies Harry J. Carman Award, 2024

University of �˻�ֱ�� College of Education Excellence in Scholarship Award for Pre-Tenure Faculty, 2023

National Academy of Education/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship, 2022-2024

Refereed Journal Articles:

McGrew, S., Reynolds, Elizabeth C., & Glass, Alex C. (2024). The problem with perspective: Teachers’ and students’ reasoning about credibility during discussions of online sources. Cognition and Instruction, 42(3), 399-425.

Breakstone, J., McGrew, S., & Smith, M. (2024). Measuring what matters: Investigating what new types of assessments reveal about students’ online source evaluations. Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review, 5(1).

McGrew, S. (2024). Teaching lateral reading: Interventions to help people read like fact checkers. Current Opinion in Psychology, 55.
McGrew, S., & Breakstone, J. (2023). Civic online reasoning across the curriculum: Developing and testing the efficacy of digital literacy lessons. AERA Open.

Levy, B. L. M., Busey, C. L., Cuenca, A., Evans, R. W., Halvorsen, A., Ho, L., Kahne, J., Kissling, M. T., Lo, J. C., McAvoy, P., & McGrew, S. (2023). Social studies education research for sustainable democratic societies: Addressing persistent civic challenges. Theory & Research in Social Education, 51(1), 1-46.

McGrew, S., & Byrne, V. B. (2022). Conversations after lateral reading: Supporting teachers to focus on process, not content. Computers & Education, 185.

Wineburg, S., Breakstone, J., McGrew, S., Smith, M., & Ortega, T. (2022). Lateral reading on the open Internet: A district-wide field study in high school government classes. Journal of Educational Psychology, 114(5), 893-909.

McGrew, S., & Chinoy, I. (2022). Fighting misinformation in college: Students learn to search and evaluate online information through flexible modules. Information & Learning Sciences, 123 (1/2), 45-64.

McGrew, S. (2021). Bridge or byway? Teaching historical reading and civic online reasoning in a U.S. history class. Theory & Research in Social Education. Advance online publication.

McGrew, S. (2021). Challenging approaches: Sharing and responding to weak digital heuristics in class discussions. Teaching & Teacher Education, 108.

McGrew, S. (2021). Internet or archive: Expertise in searching for digital sources on a contentious historical question. Cognition & Instruction. Advance online publication.

McGrew, S. (2021). Skipping the source and checking the contents: An in-depth look at students’ approaches to web evaluation. Computers in the Schools, 38(2), 75-97.

McGrew, S., & Byrne, V. B. (2021). Who is behind this? Preparing high school students to evaluate online content. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 53(4), 457-475.

McGrew, S. (2020). Learning to evaluate: An intervention in civic online reasoning. Computers and Education, 145.

McGrew, S., Smith, M., Breakstone, J., Ortega, T., & Wineburg, S. (2019). Improvement in university students’ web savvy: An intervention study. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 89(3), 485-500.

Wineburg, S., & McGrew, S. (2019). Lateral reading and the nature of expertise: Reading less and learning more when evaluating digital information. Teachers College Record, 121(11).

McGrew, S., Breakstone, J., Ortega, T., Smith, M., & Wineburg, S. (2018). Can students evaluate online sources? Learning from assessments of civic online reasoning. Theory & Research in Social Education, 46(2), 165-193.

Reisman, A., Kavanagh, S., Monte-Sano, C., Fogo, B., McGrew, S., Cipparone, P., & Simmons, E. (2018). Facilitating whole-class discussions in history: A framework for preparing teacher candidates. Journal of Teacher Education, 69(3), 278-293.

Select Professional and Popular Publications:

McGrew, S., Merroth, L., Zuspan, S., Buhrman, S., & Reynolds, E. (2022). Teaching students to evaluate online information through current events. Social Education, 86(6), 386-391.

Mirra, N., McGrew, S., Kahne, J., Garcia, A., & Tynes, B. (2022). Expanding digital citizenship education to address tough issues. Phi Delta Kappan, 103(5), 31-35.

McGrew, S. (2022). Students (and many adults) can’t tell fact from fiction online. Here’s how to help. Education Week.

Breakstone, J., McGrew, S., Smith, M., Ortega, T., & Wineburg, S. (2018). Why we need a new approach to teaching digital literacy. Phi Delta Kappan, 99(6), 27-32.

McGrew, S., Ortega, T., Breakstone, J., & Wineburg, S. (2017). The problem that’s bigger than fake news: Civic reasoning in a social media environment. American Educator, 41(3), 4- 9, 39.

Wineburg, S., & McGrew, S. (2016). Why students can’t Google their way to the truth. Education Week, 36(11), 22.

Current Projects:

Principal Investigator, Project Digital Civic Inquiry. U.S. Department of Education . American History and Civics National Activities Grants Program.

Co-Principal Investigator, National Science Foundation, Discovery Research in K-12 Program.

Principal Investigator, National Academy of Education/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship.

Team Member,

TLPL 300/618: Digital Learning Tools and Communities

TLPL 686: Secondary Social Studies Pedagogy

TLPL 702: Theories of Learning and Leadership with Technology

TLPL 708C: Educational Responses to Digital Mis- and Disinformation