Identifying variations in thinking about the nature of science: a phenomenographic study

Abstract

It is hard to imagine how one can be scientifically literate without understanding what science is about. One of the central elements of science education reform efforts over the last twenty years has been ensuring that students have a deep understanding of the nature of science (Abd-El-Khalick et al., 2008). However, research suggests these efforts have done little to improve students’ understanding of the nature of science (Sutherland et al., 2007). Much of the current research is aimed at evaluating the correctness of students’ conceptions or classifying conceptions according to philosophical positions (Bell et al, 2003; Khishfe 2008). This study attempts to build off that work by using an emergent phenomenographic research approach to identify variations in high school chemistry students’ thinking about the nature of science, using open-ended written response data from a six-item questionnaire that probes the following aspects of the nature of science: • Purpose of science • Tentativeness of scientific knowledge and the nature of theories • Creativity & imagination • Aim & structure of experiments This analysis yielded 39 primary level codes, which were then collapsed based on similarity into 14 categories of description. These categories reflect a wide range of understanding about science. Further analysis highlighted relationships between the categories and suggests two different orientations toward the nature of science. Some high school students orient their thinking about science in terms of an activity driven to prove or make certain, characterized by a collection of facts, whereas other students orient their thinking about science in terms of a finding out activity that results in discovering new information. The results of this study reveal more nuanced conceptions within these four aspects of the nature of science. Implications for science education and future research are discussed.