Beyond Trustworthiness: Comprehending Multiple Source Perspectives

To make sense of informational texts it is often necessary to grasp their authors' perspectives and how these underlie the presentation of information. Comprehending source perspectives can help readers make better judgments and develop deeper understanding through consideration of alternative approaches and viewpoints. The capabilities of engaging with multiple perspectives are increasingly important in 21st-century societies in which it has become all too easy for people to sequester themselves in "echo chambers" that resonate their own viewpoints. The aims of this chapter are to explicate what comprehension of multiple source perspectives involves, how this complex epistemic performance develops, and how it might be promoted in educational settings. We first define source perspectives and describe what representation of source perspectives of informational texts entails. Subsequently, we discuss how perspective comprehension is conceived according to three theoretical approaches: theory of mind research, theories of epistemic development, and the more recent AIR model of epistemic cognition. We show that these theoretical lenses shed light on different facets of this construct. In the last section, we suggest how growth in source perspective comprehension might be fostered by drawing on a new theory of epistemic growth, the Apt-AIR framework.