Y12W25WR Evaluating information, seriously

Design
The writing prompt

Apply lateral reading to a current controversial claim circulating online, and document your process from encounter to informed assessment.

1Retrieval check

Q1.What did Sam Wineburg’s research find about traditional critical-thinking training?

  • AIt always transfers well to online contexts
  • BUniversity students trained in traditional critical-thinking still perform poorly at evaluating online sources without specific instruction
  • CIt is unnecessary for digital natives
  • DIt works best with printed sources

Q2.What is ‘lateral reading’ and why does it outperform ‘vertical reading’?

  • AReading sideways on a screen to avoid eye strain
  • BChecking other sources about a source (lateral) before engaging with its content, rather than reading deeper into the original page (vertical)
  • CReading multiple pages at once
  • DUsing screen-readers
Show answer key

Q1 → B. University students trained in traditional critical-thinking still perform poorly at evaluating online sources without specific instruction.Online source evaluation is a distinct skill that requires specific training.

Q2 → B. Checking other sources about a source (lateral) before engaging with its content, rather than reading deeper into the original page (vertical).Staying on the original page lets the source frame its own credibility; leaving it is the move that works.

2Prompt deconstruction

Stimulus
Wineburg’s research; lateral-reading technique.
Scope
One current controversial claim; walk through the actual process.
Case
Document every step — original source, its reputation, what other sources say, what the primary evidence actually shows.
Thinking
Not a ‘true/false’ verdict — a characterisation of evidentiary status.
Output
Process + assessment + transferable habits for the next claim.

3Position nudge

Where on the range does your proposal sit?

Pole A
Pole B

Pole AQuick lateral check (3 sources)

Pole BDeep lateral investigation (primary sources)

Commit to a specific point; defend it in your planner.

4Planner — design the thing, then the trade-offs

The claim
The specific claim, with its original source.
Lateral check on the source
What other reputable sources say about the source itself.
Lateral check on the claim
How mainstream / fact-checking / domain-expert sources treat the claim.
Primary evidence
What the underlying research (if any) actually says — not what the source says it says.
My assessment
Not true/false — a specific characterisation of evidentiary status.
What I nearly missed
A step you almost skipped — and what skipping it would have cost.
Transferable habit
A specific habit to apply to the next claim.

5Sentence stems

  • My proposal is ___.
  • I am grounding this in [researcher]’s finding that ___.
  • The main trade-off is ___: this design gains ___ but loses ___.
  • The most predictable objection is ___, and my response is ___.
  • I would know it was working after [time] if ___.
  • What I am most likely to abandon is ___, so I will build in ___ to prevent that.

6Exemplar paragraph (not about this article)

(1) My proposal is to apply Wineburg’s lateral-reading protocol to a claim circulating in my feeds that ‘screen time under 2 causes lasting developmental delays.’ (2) I am grounding this in Wineburg’s finding that vertical reading on the source’s own page is a bad evaluation path. (3) The main trade-off is time: this design gains calibration but loses the speed of just-reading-and-reacting. The most predictable objection is that lateral reading demands too much for every claim, and my response is that the protocol is calibrated — for high-stakes claims you go deep, for low-stakes you do a thirty-second check. (4) I would know it was working after a month if my own sharing behaviour dropped on claims I had not cross-checked. (5) What I am most likely to abandon is the primary-evidence step — going to the actual studies, not summaries of them — so I will build in a rule that no claim gets shared without the DOI or equivalent original reference in my notes. (6) The characterisation of the screen-time claim: the underlying research shows small correlational associations that do not establish causation and that vary by content and co-viewing; ‘lasting developmental delays’ overstates what the evidence supports.

What this paragraph does, move by move

  1. Names the specific claim under examination.
  2. Grounds in Wineburg’s lateral-vs-vertical finding.
  3. Calibrates the protocol by stakes (responds to ‘too much for every claim’).
  4. Specifies a one-month behavioural success test.
  5. Builds a no-share-without-DOI rule as the anti-abandonment mechanism.
  6. Ends with a characterisation, not a true/false verdict.