University of Michigan School of Information
Navigating Scientific and Statistical Reasoning in Adolescence
Students will learn to judge whether scientific claims in media articles are consistent with evidence and, if not, to identify specific threats to internal and external validity. In all studies participants will learn abstract rules for reasoning about threats to validity and then evaluate tutorial "media reports" containing scientific findings. The measure is the before (pretest) and after (post-test) training performance of students as they critically evaluate scientific evidence in media articles.
Will students successfully transfer their evaluation skills to novel examples? The key outcome of the project will be effective training modules for 7th to 9th grade students to learn and apply evaluation skills for threats to validity in novel scientific findings.
Research setting: Classrooms in the Detroit/Ann Arbor Metropolitan areas.
The amount of the award is $118,913 over the project period.
The research reported here was supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Grant R305A170489 to 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.