Changes in Critical Thinking Skills following a Course on Science and Pseudoscience: A Quasi-Experimental Study

McLean, Carmen P.; Miller, Nathan A.

doi:10.1080/00986281003626714

Cited by 47 publications

(63 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…Additional research has found that taking a critical thinking class in psychology resulted in a 30-32% reduction in belief in paranormal phenomena (McLean and Miller 2010;Burke et al 2014). Similarly, students taking a research methods course showed a 10% reduction in paranormal beliefs following the course (Stark 2012).…”

Section: The Effect Of a Critical Thinking Course On Beliefmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For example, it was found that the paranormal beliefs of participants (> 55 years old) were reduced following a 1-week course in skeptical inquiry (Banziger 1983). Similarly, students in a course dedicated to skeptical investigation of parapsychology had a 32-45% decrease in paranormal beliefs (McLean and Miller 2010;Manza et al 2010). Students exposed to methods of critical thinking and evaluation of experimental design lowered their paranormal beliefs by 10% (Stark 2012), and the more scientific knowledge students had the more they rejected paranormal subjects (Bensley et al 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Reducing Pseudoscientific and Paranormal Beliefs in University Students Through a Course in Science and Critical Thinking

Wilson

2018

Sci & Educ

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This study measured the relationship between student's religion, gender, and propensity for fantasy thinking with the change in belief for paranormal and pseudoscientific subjects following a science and critical thinking course that directly confronted these subjects. Student pre-course endorsement of religious, paranormal, and pseudoscientific beliefs ranged from 21 to 53%, with religion having the highest endorsement rate. Pre-course belief in paranormal and pseudoscientific subjects was correlated with high scores in some fantasy thinking scales and showed a gender and a religion effect with females having an 11.1% higher belief across all paranormal and pseudoscience subcategories. Students' religion, and frequency of religious service attendance, was also important with agnostic or atheist students having lower beliefs in paranormal and pseudoscience subjects compared to religious students. Students with either low religious service attendance or very high attendance had lower paranormal and pseudoscientific beliefs. Following the critical thinking course, overall beliefs in paranormal and pseudoscientific subcategories lowered 6.8-28.9%, except for superstition, which did not significantly change. Change in belief had both a gender and religion effect with greater reductions among religious students and females.

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Section: The Effect Of a Critical Thinking Course On Beliefmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reducing Pseudoscientific and Paranormal Beliefs in University Students Through a Course in Science and Critical Thinking

Wilson

2018

Sci & Educ

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“…In addition, evidence on the effectiveness of embedding CT skills in developing domain-general CT has been inconsistent. Some studies found that explicit CT instruction within subject matter domains is an effective way of developing domain-general CT skills (e.g., Bensley and Spero 2014;Dwyer et al 2012;Solon 2007), whereas several others reported an insignificant effect (e.g., Anderson et al 2001;McLean and Miller 2010;Toy and Ok 2012). Furthermore, it is unclear whether instructional intervention that aims to promote domain-general CT skills also improves students' ability to solve domain-specific CT tasks, and vice versa (Fischer et al 2014;Siegel 1988).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Systematic design of a learning environment for domain-specific and domain-general critical thinking skills

Tiruneh

Weldeslassie

Kassa

et al. 2015

Education Tech Research Dev

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Identifying effective instructional approaches that stimulate students' critical thinking (CT) has been the focus of a large body of empirical research. However, there is little agreement on the instructional principles and procedures that are theoretically sound and empirically valid to developing both domain-specific and domain-general CT skills. The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of systematically designed subject matter instruction in stimulating the development of domain-specific and domaingeneral CT skills, and to investigate the relationship between the two. The study employed a pretest-posttest quasi-experimental design with two conditions: 45 students participated in an experimental condition and 44 students in a control condition. A learning environment, in the context of a freshman physics course, was designed according to the First Principles of Instruction model. The experimental condition followed the designed learning environment, while the control condition followed regular subject matter instruction that was not designed according to the First Principles of Instruction model. The experimental condition scored significantly higher than the control condition on a domain-specific CT test. The results also showed that better performance on a domain-specific CT test explained a significant proportion of the variance on a domain-general CT test. However, the experimental learning environment did not result in a significantly greater pretestposttest improvement in the acquisition of domain-general CT skills compared to the control learning environment. Instructional design principles that may contribute to the present understanding of the integration of CT skills within the regular subject matter instruction are discussed.

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“…However, in both Manza et al and McLean and Miller, the ''non-paranormal'' course used for comparison did not address the elements of pseudoscience. The comparison courses focused on lower-level statistics (Manza et al, 2010) or on statistical concepts and research methods (McLean & Miller, 2010). It may be too big of a leap for students to move from thinking about statistics to evaluating the paranormal, even if critical thinking abilities are relevant to each area.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Enhancing and Assessing Critical Thinking in a Psychological Research Methods Course

Stark

2012

Teaching of Psychology

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This article presents an assessment of critical thinking skills and paranormal beliefs in students taking a research methods course. The course emphasized separating scientific claims from pseudoscientific assumptions and used real-world examples to teach students to think critically; however, the course did not use examples of the paranormal to teach about pseudoscience. There was a significant decrease in students' paranormal beliefs at the end of the course and significant improvement in their abilities to evaluate psychological research; however, there was not a significant change in their general critical thinking abilities. In addition, all measures related to course performance, such that students who showed lower levels of paranormal beliefs and greater general critical thinking abilities at the outset of the course earned more total points. The author discusses how the course builds skills recommended for psychology majors and identifies areas for future research in scientific thinking and belief in pseudoscience.

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Changes in Critical Thinking Skills following a Course on Science and Pseudoscience: A Quasi-Experimental Study

Cited by 47 publications

References 17 publications

Reducing Pseudoscientific and Paranormal Beliefs in University Students Through a Course in Science and Critical Thinking

Reducing Pseudoscientific and Paranormal Beliefs in University Students Through a Course in Science and Critical Thinking

Systematic design of a learning environment for domain-specific and domain-general critical thinking skills

Enhancing and Assessing Critical Thinking in a Psychological Research Methods Course

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