This component requires you to complete a Discussion Board task before attending Seminars 2-6 to earn up to 5 marks regardless of whether you actually attend the seminar sessions or not. Refer to the PDF document entitled “Pre-seminar Tasks for more information.

a) Key assumption and claims: First of all, identify the key assumption made by the author of the online news article. Then list the claims presented by the author to support the key assumption. For example, consider an article that appears to assume that boys are smarter than girls (key assumption) based on research studies conducted in co-educational secondary schools in Singapore where boys were found to outperform girls in Maths.

b) Viability of the claims: Critically think about the bases for the (key) assumption made. You can do this by identifying the strengths and weaknesses of the claims made by the author of the online news article. For example, the research study mentioned was conducted in co-educational secondary schools in Singapore. The strength could be that the data used is official and reliable. However, a weakness is that not all secondary schools in Singapore are co-educational so they may not be representative of all teenage boys and girls in Singapore.

c) Modifications: You may want to consider alternative explanations for the phenomenon but in order to do this, you need to read widely on the topic concerned so that sufficient knowledge is gained to present a meaningful discussion. For example, are there similar studies that were conducted in single-sex secondary schools in Singapore? Did girls from single-sex schools not perform as well in Maths as their male counterparts in single-sex schools? Consider also that not all girls in co-educational secondary schools come from coeducational primary schools. Could there be other theoretical or empirical explanations for the inferior performance of girls in Maths compared to their male counterparts in co-educational schools? You will also need to back up your argument with supporting