Samuel Tunstall
Investigating College Students' Reasoning With Messages of Risk and Causation
Michigan State University
language risk causation pervades modern media sources response statistical literacy often framed critical means understanding discourse michigan state university several faculties worked create new mathematics course entitled quantitative literacy fulfill universitys general education mathematics requirement though course center exclusively statistical thinking methods curriculum include attention science reports media among topics often based research using statistical methods effort begin understand students reason articles taken course students quantitative literacy answered several openended questions beginning semester response opinionated news article risk relation processed meats analysis 152 students responses using toulmins framework argumentation revealed majority students agreed authors misleading message results suggest prior knowledge preexisting biases serve potential barriers types reasoning fostered course thus quantitative literacy curriculum specifically attend students preexisting beliefs realworld contexts encountered course