Skeptical Thinking in the Classroom and its Impact - School of Arts ...

Two students (5, 7a) had a weak belief in astrology, but the activity had no effect on how
the viewed astrology.
One student (11) was a surprise. The student uses good logical reasoning skills in class,
but ignored the data and saw what they wanted to see in the data; a confirmation of
astrology. The student seemed to be fixed on how accurate the horoscope was for them
on that occasion.
On the next day we quickly examined the accuracy of their horoscopes, and the data
again formed a bell curve.
Five were very close, five were somewhat close, six were mostly wrong, four were totally
wrong.
Although two more were very close, there were two less that were somewhat close.
There was one more totally wrong and one less mostly wrong.
This activity showed me how powerful ideas based on belief really are. I was going on
the assumption that when a person is faced with solid evidence they would have to reject
an erroneous idea. This is not just teaching facts or processes, but changing the way a
person thinks. It seemed as though there was a prism that students viewed the data from
this exercise that bent the results to fit their idea of what would happen.
Haunted House Activity
A Likert response scale from -2 to 2 was used in rating student responses.
A response of 2 gave very good reasoning as to the supposed paranormal evens in the
house, and a -2 for a response that is unreasonable in light of the article.
This activity showed the biggest spread between all of the responses. It did not seem to
change student’s ideas on ghosts. I infer that this is because it was one specific instance
that a haunting was decisively disproved, and that one instance does not disprove all
other reported instances.
Nine students (2, 4, 7, 8, 10, 1a, 3a, 7a, 8a) had a very positive reaction to the article.
Three stated that they had no belief in ghosts to start with. (2, 1a, 8a) The rest stated that
they believe in ghosts, but the house in the article just was not haunted.
One student scored a 1 (3) as the student stated a previous and continuing non belief in
ghosts, but all questions were not answered.
Five students received a neutral score. (5, 12, 4a, 5a, 6a) Their views mostly start with a
belief in ghosts, but use good logic when it applies to this specific instance. Their main
view remains unchanged.
Three students received a score of -1. (6, 11, 2a) They showed little to no movement
from a very solid belief in ghosts, even in this specific case.