Scientific thinking for all: a toolkit that will prepare your high school students for the challenges and opportunities ahead.
Scientific Thinking for All: A Toolkit
Overview
Teach your students not to fool themselves
In a world flooded with information, we continually make choices about what information to believe and human limitations and biases can make it easy to fool ourselves. Many people in the scientific community have worked to understand and counter these limitations, developing cognitive tools and techniques to minimize bias and avoid cognitive traps. But these techniques can be learned and used by anyone. For too long, these thinking tools have been missing from high-school education. That is why we have worked with a team of experts to create Scientific thinking for all: a toolkit.
Scientific thinking for all: a toolkit is a six-unit curriculum for 14–18-year-old students. It will prepare your high school students for the challenges and opportunities ahead. It teaches a toolkit of cognitive strategies for real-world issues. But it will also provide a way for people with different opinions to establish a shared view of reality to allow people to solve problems collectively.
By learning to view the world scientifically, students will develop skills in reasoning and collaborating, equipping them to deal with the challenges of the 21st century.
Scientific thinking for all: a toolkit is currently only available in English, but we plan to publish materials in other languages in the future. Over the next three years, the full six-unit curriculum will be developed.
Several more units are on their way or in field trials!
The themes for the six units are:
Tools for investigating the world
1. Evidence & Iteration in Science
2. Scientific Modeling (JOIN THE FIELD TEST)
Tools for evaluating data
3. Using Evidence to Determine Causal Relationships
4. Addressing Uncertainty in Data
5. Cognitive Bias in Science and Society (JOIN THE FIELD TEST)
Applying science to everyday life
6. Group Decision-making
Get Involved
We are looking for teachers to pilot our materials!
A group of pioneer teachers tested the first unit at the beginning of 2023. Now the Lawrence Hall of Science team is recruiting more teachers to participate in field tests.
Take advantage of this great opportunity and sign-up for LHS’s newsletter to receive information about digital workshops, field testing and new unit releases.
