The Admiralty Code: A cognitive tool for self-directed learning

Abstract

This article introduces The Admiralty Code - a cognitive tool, used by police investigators and intelligence analysts, which can also assist learners in evaluating information and distinguishing it from potential misinformation or disinformation. One reason for using inquiry-based learning methods in education is that they develop students' capabilities for engaging in self-directed inquiry, throughout their lives. But the carefully-designed information environments in which students conduct inquiry-based learning in schools or colleges are much more benign than the ones in which they will conduct their self-directed inquiries, later on. Information environments such as the internet or the mass media present the inquirer with an excess of information, as well as misinformation and even disinformation. the challenge of distinguishing essential from non-essential information, and of evaluating its trustworthiness, is not addressed sufficiently by inquiry-based learning methods in benign education environments. Use of The Admiralty Code has the potential to correct this shortcoming. Application of The Admiralty Code is illustrated by an analysis of the evidence surrounding the mysterious loss of HMAS Sydney in 1941.