The uses of (mis)information in education policy: introduction to the special issue

This special issue of Evidence & Policy focuses on growing concerns around misinformation, disinformation and research misuse in education policy. This introduction to the issue shows how education policy is a unique and particularly vulnerable information ecosystem because it is deeply contested, highly politicized, often structurally decentralized and susceptible to intermediaries who frame problems, package evidence and influence policy discourse. Drawing on scholarship across multiple fields - including misinformation studies, policy studies and education research - our introduction highlights how misinformation in education is not only a question of false claims, but also of strategic framing and the selective use of 'evidence' in service of ideological agendas. The introduction summarizes the six articles in the issue, which examine topics including civics teachers' information use, anti-LGBTQIA+ advocacy campaigns, countermeasures to misinformation, authoritarian discourse in Hungary, research misuse in knowledge brokering, and shifting claims about evidence-based education in Australia. Several themes emerge within and across these articles: the centrality of systemic and contextual factors, the importance of intermediaries, the role of language and norms, and the imperative for interdisciplinary, comparative and critically informed approaches to this increasingly critical issue. We conclude by discussing how researchers and practitioners can combine efforts around media literacy, institutional reform, accountability for knowledge brokers, with a more rigorous interrogation of what counts as evidence in education policy.