NAVIGATING scientific AND STATISTICAL REASONING
ABOUT THE COURSE
It is easier than ever to read up on the latest scientific studies and informed citizens are expected to use scientific evidence to inform decisions about health, behavior, and public policy. However, media reports of research often overstate the implications of scientific evidence, overlook flaws in the evidence, or even present pseudoscience. When faced with headlines and articles presenting scientific evidence, people need to learn to distinguish between high quality science, low quality science, and pseudoscience.
Unfortunately, students and sometimes even trained scientists make numerous errors when reasoning about evidence. Thus, our research team at University of Michigan has created a course on Navigating Scientific and Statistical Reasoning with the goal of teaching adolescents about basic scientific reasoning principles.
Across seven modules we introduce various topics important for understanding science in the news, including correlation and causation, sampling and selection in experiments, effect size, and source reliability. For each unit we provide teaching materials in the form of PowerPoint and PDFs to be taught in the classroom, lesson plans, and student activities/homework.
The research reported here was supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Grant R305A170489 to the University of Michigan. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the Institute or the U.S. Department of Education.