Joining the conversation: Teaching students to think and communicate like scholars.

Abstract

Although today's psychology students are well versed in the early stages of the scientific method (developing a research question; designing an experiment), they are rarely asked to engage in the final stage of the scientific method: building and communicating an idea among scholars. As a result, students often fail to appreciate the "unending conversation" that is academic inquiry. To help students learn to think "like scientists" and join a scholarly conversation, we have tried mirroring elements of scholarly practices in the classroom (e.g., writing, collaboration). Evidence in the natural sciences has suggested that each of these pedagogical techniques, taken individually, can enhance students' critical thinking. More recent work in chemistry education, however, has demonstrated that a holistic approach, engaging students in multiple scholarly practices, may lead to greater gains in critical thinking. In this article, I argue for such an approach in psychology-one that more closely mirrors how scholars operate in the real world. As a model, I present a scaffolded writing project that asks students to think like scientists by engaging in multiple scholarly practicescollaborative writing, inquiry-based research, and peer review. I hypothesize that students can make significant gains in critical thinking when they are placed in the role of scholar. I thus call for a new direction in how we approach today's psychology students and highlight the critical need for empirical testing of this and other combinatory approaches.

A modest proposal to the peer review process: a collaborative and interdisciplinary approach in the assessment of scholarly communication

“…A primary goal in the development of the scientific method lies in our ability to test hypotheses and communicate research findings in both a scientifically rigorous and replicable process, one that helps us to better understand human behaviors and promotes the exchanges of innovative ideas among scholars (Parks, 2020). The traditional peer review process (TPR) has been described as a type of “quality filter” that maintains the highest levels of academic publications in terms of integrity and ethics (Panda, 2019).…”