Complementary Medicine in the Classroom: Is it Science?

Abstract

This academic essay provides a strategy for teaching complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) in the classroom, a subject typically critiqued as unconventional and non-scientific. It demonstrates how students can enhance their critically reflective skills by examining polarizing and controversial medical topics, which are often considered by conventional doctors and researchers to be on the fringes of credible Western medicine. Included are examples of hands-on CAM experiments that can easily be incorporated in the classroom. It demonstrates how, by using an inquiry-based constructivist pedagogy, examining controversial and sometimes pseudoscientific ideas deepens learning.

Keywords

• CAM
• complementary medicine
• constructivist education
• critical reflection
• inquiry-based
• pseudoscience