Populism and Higher Education Curriculum Development: Problem Based Learning as a Mitigating Response

The academic world faces a tsunami in which knowledge and evidence-based understanding and decisions are in danger of being swept away by the deluge of populist propaganda and assertion masquerading as the new truths. The populist pandemic represents a major challenge to learning and teaching in all disciplines and the failure of the academic body to foster the societal engagement of learners and engage actively itself means that the challenge is now a red alert or in government parlance at a ‘critical’ level requiring an urgent and exceptional response. Hence the need for, and purpose of, this book.