English secondary students' thinking about the status of scientific theories: consistent, comprehensive, coherent and extensively evidenced explanations of aspects of the natural world – or just 'an idea someone has'
One of my publications is:
Taber, K. S., Billingsley, B., Riga, F., & Newdick, H. (2015). English secondary students' thinking about the status of scientific theories: consistent, comprehensive, coherent and extensively evidenced explanations of aspects of the natural world – or just 'an idea someone has'. The Curriculum Journal, 1-34. doi: 10.1080/09585176.2015.1043926
This paper derived from the LASAR project.
Abstract
Teaching about the nature of science (NOS) is seen as a priority for science education in many national contexts. The present paper focuses on one central issue in learning about NOS: understanding the nature and status of scientific theories. A key challenge in teaching about NOS is to persuade students that scientific knowledge is generally robust and reliable, yet also in principle always open to challenge and modification. Theories play a central role, as they are a form of conjectural knowledge that over time may be abandoned, replaced, modified, yet sometimes become well established as current best scientific understanding. The present paper reports on findings from interviews with 13-14 year olds in England where target knowledge presents theories as 'consistent, comprehensive, coherent and extensively evidenced explanations of aspects of the natural world'. Student thinking reflected a two-tier typology of scientific knowledge in which largely unsupported imaginative ideas ('theories') became transformed into fairly definitive knowledge (such as laws) through relatively straightforward testing. These results are considered in relation to research into intellectual development which indicates that effective teaching in this area requires careful scaffolding of student learning, but has potential to contribute to supporting intellectual development across the curriculum.
Keywords:
English secondary students' thinking about the status of scientific theories: consistent, comprehens
- nature of science (NOS);
- scientific theory;
- learners' epistemologies;
- models of intellectual development;
- scaffolding of learning;
- sociocultural reasoning
Contents:
- Introduction
- The background to the study
- Teaching and learning about the nature of science
- The post-positivist turn in the philosophy of science
- Developing curriculum models of the nature of science
- The curriculum context of the present study
- The challenge of understanding the status of scientific theories about origins
- Student thinking about scientific knowledge
- The present study
- Methodology
- The sample
- Analysis
- Findings
- The status of theories
- Proving' theories
- Naıve empiricist/rationalist views of science
- The role of the scientific community
- Scientific knowledge established by agreement
- Limits of science
- Scientific knowledge as fallible
- Discussion
- Why does the nature of scientific theory present such a large 'learning demand'?
- Intellectual development as a potential constraint on understanding NOS
- Implications for teaching and research: From 'an idea someone has' to 'consistent, comprehensive, coherent and extensively evidenced explanations of aspects of the natural world'
