A common challenge instructors may encounter is asking students to consciously unpack their existing assumptions or beliefs before choosing a topic or developing a thesis. When students (either by prompting or spontaneously) adopt a perspective or thesis prior to beginning their research, they are likely to conflate observation and interpretation tasks – examples can include cherry-picking their research, not engaging with contradictory conclusions or counterarguments, or failing to engage deeply with sources that seem to support their ideas without understanding the process, reasoning, and context of that source. In essence, they are conflating their observation phase with their interpretive and analytical phases, which will inevitably constrict their entire process.

Asking students to dedicate discrete time to an observation phase in their research can help students de-couple those stages and promote a mindset for research as information-gathering and context-building before making assumptions about the facts, findings or meaning.

Strategies:

• Build in longer spans of time for students to brainstorm topic ideas and begin research before articulating a specific thesis.
• Other ways to support a more authentic research process may include introducing assignments earlier, presenting assignments in parts focused on specific skills or tasks rather than as a multi-part whole, designing Milestones or other assignments throughout the term as parts of a single whole project students develop throughout the term during the course development phase, or other ways of restructuring the pace of assignments to allow for sufficient time, as well as having students practice these skills via in-class activities or work time.
• Rather than asking students to draft, develop, or submit a thesis statement at the beginning of a project, outline, or organizer, ask them to develop a research question their thesis could answer that does not have a foregone, implicit, or pre-supposed conclusion.
• Connect SIFT (also known as The Four Moves) in the research process to observation: this method specifically addresses the need to slow down and use observation steps before interpreting whether a specific source is credible and applicable to a specific task or project.
• Consider bringing in mentor texts where the writer/researcher explicitly discusses their research process, that clearly illustrate an observational or investigative phase before specific conclusions are reached, or where the writer/researcher finds themselves changing their perspective or the arc of the project as new information is uncovered.

Even as students build their subject-level knowledge and research skills, another common challenge is guiding them to effectively include evidence in essays, presentations, or other projects. Often, instructors focus on the mechanics of in-text citation to address this, but that is only one part of the skill set students need to build to consistently and effectively integrate researched evidence into their work, especially since for students pursuing non-academic careers, formal academic citation may be a less crucial long-term skill than internalizing the need to refer to evidence in a variety of other professional contexts, such as conversational oral citation, effectively using evidence in visual aids, etc.

On a writing level, this relates to students understanding the differences between observation and interpretation so that they can clearly include evidence and analysis in rhetorical formats like essays or presentations. This is often approached on the level of paragraph analysis, where instructors may discuss strategies such as “claim-evidence-analysis” or “the sandwich method” in order to encourage students to not merely list or report evidence but to articulate their reasoning for including that piece of evidence as part of their specific interpretive or analytic project.

Strategies:

• Ask students to engage with mentor texts, reflecting on how observations and evidence are introduced and presented.
• Consider taking this as an opportunity to help orient students to the conventions of academic or professional publishing in a specific discipline, e.g., by doing a close reading or “walk through” of the organizational structure of a scientific paper (background, methods, results, and interpretations, etc.), a social worker’s care plan or case study, written reports of witness statements in a criminal justice context, etc.
• Consider scaffolding this task by giving students the opportunity to submit and receive feedback on one or two paragraphs before submitting an entire paper.

Asking students to deliberate and consciously pause between gathering information and contextualizing it as an argument can be an important way to reinforce critical thinking, especially about bias, perspective, and unexamined or unconscious beliefs.

• Be deliberate and thoughtful about using words like “objective” or "factual.”
• Take the opportunity to activate prior knowledge by asking students to draw on what they have learned about these tools, steps, or stages from previous courses.
  • Students in the Gen Ed sequence may have encountered the scientific method in PSY 101, SCI 105, SCI 101; they will also have worked with the idea of textual, visual, or other “evidence” to support a claim in art, history, and English courses.
    • Consider asking students to think back to those classes and reflect on whether they had any preconceived ideas or understandings that engaging with evidence in class led them to reconsider. Because this may feel like an overly broad question, consider coming prepared with a personal example, either of your own experiences as a student/learner or something you have observed in your students. (If this discussion is particularly productive in a specific section, consider asking students if you could save their answers and share them as anonymized examples for students in the future.)
• Connect these distinct steps of observation and analysis to both potential professional activities and specific in-class activities.
• • For example, it may be useful to discuss observation as a discrete step in research before determining a specific topic, thesis, or framing for a project.

• Defining the Terms
• Students can reflect on or briefly research how “observation vs. interpretation” is defined, presented, or taught in other disciplines. (For example, searching the phrase through Google or YouTube will likely bring up results from a variety of fields ranging from science to education to philosophy to business/life coaching). Students might also be asked to think back on other classes they have taken at NLU that have covered these skills (for example, PSY 101 and SCI 105 both specifically feature content on the scientific method; ART 105 and HIS 103 also deal with gathering data in the form specific to that discipline and how to describe and interpret it, including with the framework of lenses). Some links that could be used to support this activity are included in the links in the following drop-down.
• Looking Separately and Together
• The instructor provides five photos of different rooms/scenes of people; students are asked to spend 3-5 minutes writing only details they can see and then another 3-5 minutes using those observations to directly support interpretive guesses. (Observation might be that there is a stuffed animal on the sofa and some crayons on the floor; interpretation might be that a child lives in the house, etc.). This could also allow for a discussion on what details different people noticed/focused on and used to build their interpretations and/or a self-reflection activity about what details they gravitated to/what those lenses might be. 
• Using Different Lenses
• The word “bias” can have an overtly negative connotation that students will be reluctant to identify with. Instead, ask students to consider how different personal experiences or expertise can shape how someone would view something like a sports event, a superhero movie, a child’s dance recital, etc. How does a deeply invested fan “read” the events of the game or commentary versus someone there for the first time? Someone who came with friends or family but doesn’t care much about the sport itself? Someone who supports a rival team? Someone who is related to one of the players? Is there such a thing as a “neutral” or “objective” viewer for the event? What would that look like? This can be a quick activity or warm-up, which the instructor can then deliberately reframe as it seems most applicable to the discipline or specific topic.
• Unpacking an Interpretation
• The instructor provides an interpretive description (or possibly multiple versions) of a typical example of fieldwork or observation in the discipline (similar to the example of Umar found in this reading link from an early childhood development course) and students work to separate the interpretive or evaluative details to construct a more basic perceptual observation narrative. (For example, the interpretive version might say, “Maria became angry and threw a tantrum, knocking the puzzle to the floor because she could not get the pieces to fit,” and the goal would be to envision what that looks like without interpretation–the actual actions Maria took.)  
• Language Deep Dive
  • This might include thinking through an idea like this: we might see a child and think quickly/automatically, “Oh, they are happy/mad/scared,” but what are we actually seeing, hearing, or measuring that is making us interpret the child’s behavior, expression, or speech in that way? Then, list out those potential observations and sort out if they are perceptual observations or interpretations.
• Find a reading specific to your discipline, similar to the example provided here from a child development course: reading link  
• Using examples from your reading as a starting point, Using the examples from the reading link as a starting point, create (or develop as a class activity) a word bank of phrases and discuss whether they are always a perceptual observation, always an interpretive observation, or could function as both, with some example phrases or sentences demonstrating their usage and how they might move between the different stages.

Articles

Observations Versus Interpretations in Science

Power Tool: Interpretation vs. Observation

Amy Herman: A Lesson on Looking

Interpretation vs. Observation

Spotlight: Observations vs. interpretations