Teaching Philosophy Statement
Chase Mason
TEACHING PHILOSOPHY
In the life sciences, goals for student learning include not only the understanding of scientific
concepts, but more importantly the development of a basic scientific skill set that allows students to apply
scientific thinking to both the analysis of the natural world and situations in everyday life. Such a skill set
must include basic training in scientific skepticism, the tools of which provide the vital ability to critically
examine claims and evaluate their validity based on available evidence. This ability has immense value
not only for those planning to enter scientific fields, but also for the general public when confronting
potentially dubious scientific claims. As an educator, my primary goal is to equip my students with
the tools to be better-informed citizens, and in the sciences this means emphasizing principles of skeptical
inquiry, scientific reasoning, and the value of scientific evidence. In introductory science courses, and
especially those geared toward non-majors, in my view this should be the single most important objective.
A non-major student who leaves my course with nothing but an understanding of scientific skepticism has
left with a powerful set of skills to spot scams, superstitions, sensationalism, logical fallacies, false
controversies, frauds, hoaxes, quackery, and general pseudoscience in their everyday lives. In addition,
such skills can serve to empower students who may believe that science “is not for them”, and provide an
excellent springboard for further interest in the sciences. Achieving these learning goals inherently
includes active student learning, implementation of which could range from simple class discussions to
fully inquiry-based labs.
For upper-level undergraduate and graduate-level courses, where students arrive with a preexisting understanding of the scientific process, the value of emphasizing skepticism remains. Here the
primary focus is typically on a specific set of concepts, for instance in ecology or plant physiology,
however I find that a highly effective method for presenting the material is through the origin of the
concepts themselves. For instance, principles of plant nutrition can be conveyed through discussion of
classical and recent experiments that have given rise to our nuanced current understanding. By far my
favorite courses to teach are those that can incorporate instruction in methodologies as well as concepts.
When course format permits, I find student-run experiments are by far the best way for students to obtain
and retain both methods skills and conceptual understanding, as students leave knowing both what is
known and how it is known. This serves as an excellent avenue to translate my own research to the
classroom, as plants are highly conducive to manipulative classroom experiments in which immediate
feedback can more efficiently guide the learning process by uncovering misconceptions in real time and
the needs of particular students can be targeted. Incorporating a mix of formative and summative
evaluations can take the focus off grades and redirect it to where it belongs – the course content.
My teaching record exemplifies my commitment to instilling scientific skepticism in my students.
I have designed a freshman introductory seminar on science and skepticism, entitled “Extraordinary
Teaching Philosophy Statement
Chase Mason
Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence: Science, Pseudoscience, and How to Tell the Difference”, in
which I emphasize principles of skeptical inquiry, scientific reasoning, and scientific evidence through a
series of case studies in historical and modern pseudoscience and other misapplications of the scientific
method. This seminar is designed to prepare students to critically analyze scientific claims in a variety of
fields, including energy, health, the environment, and education, and by exploring the topic of
pseudoscience students learn about the most pernicious cognitive biases and how to identify flawed
reasoning. Scientific skepticism serves as a central theme in my other courses as well. For instance, I have
designed and taught an upper-level special topics course in experimental statistics, which I organized
around the practical use of proper experimental design and statistical methods to differentiate between
claims that are and aren’t supported by evidence. This approach applies equally well to the inquiry-based
introductory plant biology labs I have taught, where students design their own experiments to test their
predictions about the role of various environmental factors on plant growth and diversity. One of the most
pervasively difficult things to get students to do is to trust data over their own expectations and personal
experiences, and breaking through this barrier is best accomplished by giving students agency in the
scientific process such that they are invested in the quality of the answer rather than any specific outcome.
My extensive undergraduate mentoring mirrors my formal teaching, with students honing their
scientific skill set through independent research projects. Devising and carrying out experiments to test
questions of their own design cements an appreciation for and understanding of skeptical inquiry, with
data as the final arbiter of the strength of an assertion or prediction. I have mentored 16 undergraduate
students to date with independent research projects, from conception of a research question through
collection of data and analysis, to communication of results and conclusions. I find this form of teaching,
when possible, to be by far the most effective at instilling an understanding and respect for the scientific
process. Together I see my mentoring and formal teaching as aligning to instill the principles of scientific
skepticism in as many students as possible, maximizing my effectiveness as a science educator.