Without prompting, 14 students wrote on course evaluations that the course improved critical thinking, with other unprompted comments citing skepticism and scientific reasoning.¶
Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · causalr1·q2
Currency · newest study 2013 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person
Subclaims¶
Reading the evidence codes
q is the design tier, i the impact, n the sample, and the kind with its r
the rigour judged within that kind: what each code means.
This claim: no standardized effect is recorded in observations/ for it yet, so no benchmark reading is possible.
q2 i? Unprompted teacher-course evaluation comments reported gains in critical thinking, skepticism, and scientific reasoning. → Franz 2013
Evidence¶
Franz 2013¶
Franz, T. M., & Green, K. H. (2013). The impact of an interdisciplinary learning community course on pseudoscientific reasoning in first-year science students. Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 13(5), 90–105. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1017127
q2 · i? · causal · r1
Supplementary qualitative analysis of teacher-course evaluation comments across the two study years; the article reports the counts of unprompted comments by theme and treats them as "further evidence of meeting the goal of improving scientific reasoning and evidence-based critical thinking".
"Without being asked or prompted, 14 students wrote that the course improved critical thinking, eleven used the term skeptic or skepticism, eleven discussed how course content improved their thinking and questioning, eight discussed how it improved their ability to evaluate and/or analyze, and one specifically discussed how it improved scientific reasoning."
Discussion¶
Related Claims¶
- The article reports that without explicitly applying critical thinking to pseudoscientific content, students may develop strong scientific reasoning while still holding uncritical paranormal beliefs. — related
- In one class of 14 non-science majors, preliminary explicit instruction in scientific reasoning patterns (e.g., IAT statement construction) was followed by a larger average normalized LCTSR gain (68%) than in earlier courses without it (11%, n=42) — related
- LLM responses that are incomplete or incorrect prompt students to question, verify and improve the information, fostering critical thinking through cycles of validation and correction — related
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