Teaching the Scientific Method in the Active Learning Classroom

Extract

Undergraduate classroom presentations of the scientific method in the social sciences usually involve a lecture on the nature of the scientific enterprise: the discovery of the “truth” (if such a thing even exists) about the relationship between some set of concepts, events, or phenomena by means of generating falsifiable hypotheses and testing them against data. The tendency of faculty, however understandable, to convert the presentation into an abstract discussion of the philosophy of science often obscures the basic issues for students. I present here a simple, active learning classroom exercise which sensitizes students to the difficulties of hypothesizing about and testing unobservable phenomena by appealing to students' intuitive understanding of the nature of knowledge and reality. I first describe the purposes and objectives of the activity in more detail, then discuss implementing this specific activity. Suggestions for activity adaptation and development by other instructors follow, and a brief discussion of sources and resources concludes.