Critique of

Examining Students’ Views on the Nature of Science:  Results from Korean 6th, 8th, and 10th Graders

By Sukjin Kang, Jeonju National University of Education, Korea

Lawrence C. Scharmann, Kansas State University, USA

Taehee Noh, Seoul National University, Korea

(Early View, Online)

 

Erin Peters

EDCI 891

Fall 2004/Spring 2005

 

Purpose of Study

            This study examined students’ views on the nature of science using a large-scale survey. The study was administered to 1702 Korean 6th, 8th, and 10th grade students in schools located in the suburbs of Seoul. The research referenced in this study suggested that it is more effective to address early learning in order to give students correct prior knowledge than to try to change incorrect prior knowledge about the nature of science. Earlier studies show that elementary students do possess their own epistemologies and views on the nature of science and that it is viable to begin teaching the nature of science at the elementary level.

 

            The researchers conducted this study because they felt that the results would be informative as baseline data to improve design of curriculum and instruction regarding the nature of science. They also wanted to compare students’ views of nature of science across grade levels and examine how schools influence student views. The researchers also set out to characterize possible differences of students’ views of the nature of science in Western and non-Western cultures.

 

Background

            In their literature review, the researchers found no common compilation of concepts regarding the nature of science. Previous researchers did not have common understandings of the core concepts of the nature of science. The researchers decided to use the most frequent concepts that appeared in the literature review for their instrument:  the purpose of science, the definition of scientific theory, the nature of models, the tentativeness of scientific theory, and the origin of scientific theory.

 

Methodology

            The researchers felt that using a Likert-type scale as their measuring instrument would cause problems because the perceptions of students and researchers are not necessarily aligned and the questions may be misinterpreted causing erroneous data. They considered a qualitative design, but the study was too broad for individual interviews. The final instrument consisted of five multiple choice questions that were adapted from previous studies of the nature of science with the addition of an “other” choice with a space for written responses. The draft of the instrument was piloted to 100 students for the purpose of clarification of wording. After the instrument was revised, it was administered to 1702 students in 6th, 8th and 10th grade to identify any age-related trends in the data. Chi-squared statistics was used to analyze the data for chosen responses. Written responses were analyzed for patterns which were then categorized.

 

Findings

            From the results of the first question, the researchers found that most students confuse the realms of science and technology. Science was viewed by the majority of students as an instrument used for social purposes. The results of question two revealed that the everyday meaning of theory in Korea has a scientific meaning, whereas in Western culture, the meaning of theory is interpreted through the lens of everyday language. Question three showed that students are more likely to see models as copies of reality rather than a constructed representation that contains theoretical perspectives. The fourth question demonstrated that students were not likely to view science as tentative knowledge. The last question supported the idea that students feel that knowledge is both discovered and invented, and they perceive science using an ontological view.

 

Positive Aspects of Study

            The researcher’s choice of 6th, 8th and 10th graders had a solid rationale. Eleventh graders in Korea are required to choose either a science major or a non-science major. Students who choose the science major go to schools where the curriculum focuses on skills and knowledge students need to proceed into science careers, and students who choose the non-science major go to schools where the focus is on business management. The study participants were chosen at the 10th grade because the population has students who are interested in science as well students who are not interested in science. Sixth graders were chosen because research shows that elementary students below this level are not equipped linguistically to explain their thoughts in a meaningful way. The researchers choose 8th grade students because they wanted to measure growth between 6th and 10th grade. By choosing these participants, the researchers avoided any bias at the upper grade with testing only science or only non-science majors, and chose grade intervals that could show significant changes if they occurred.

 

            The choice to include a small written portion provided a qualitative component of the study that reinforced the findings. The researchers mentioned that a deeper look at written responses gave them a clearer understanding of the quantitative explanation. Had the survey been set up with only multiple choice questions or a Likert-type scale, the true understandings of the students may not have surfaced. Conducting a study with over 1,000 students gave the researchers a broad picture of the understanding of the nature of science, and the small written portion gave the researchers a deeper picture of how students thought about science. The quantitative portion of the study, the option for writing responses, illustrated clear trends about the thoughts of the students, but did not probe for a deeper understanding because students were given choices and did not create their own answers. The written portion allowed students to express original thoughts and eliminated the problem that occurs when students misinterpret the researchers’ intentions in providing a selection of answers.

 

            The researchers were informed about the literature regarding scientists’ and educators’ definitions of the nature of science. The topics for the questions on the instrument were selected based on the prior research in the field of the nature of science. While reviewing literature, the researchers observed that there was not a standard concept regarding the nature of science. Instead, they found research that said science constantly changes along with technology, therefore the nature of science is constantly evolving, and thus a standard definition of the nature of science should not exist. The instrument tends to be more valid because the researchers chose topics that were the most frequently cited in the literature.

 

            The instrument used in the study is conceptually strong because the process used to construct it was thorough. The research team took a great deal of time and effort to develop a thoughtful instrument. First they built the questions from previous surveys and adapted them for use in the Korean culture. They then field tested the questions for an appropriate reading level by interviewing 6th graders to clarify reading issues and taking notes on their comments. The researchers also asked the 100 students who field tested the instrument to write notes on anything that was confusing, which provided information about how a larger sample of students might understand the text.

 

            Once a code was established, the researchers worked until they could achieve a 90% agreement among the interpretation of the qualitative responses. This process ensured that when different researchers interpreted data, each person could reliably make similar judgments. Having inter-grader reliability made the conclusions of this study credible because it limited the subjectivity of coding open-ended answers.

 

Negative Aspects of Study

            Some of the research presented in the paper was not aligned with the purpose and finding of the research. Much of the background section of the paper discussed the importance of early placement of nature of science concepts in curriculum, but the study did not emphasize this idea. The choice of the elementary students at the 6th grade level who took the instrument only marginally addressed the issue of establishing a strong nature of science knowledge early in a science curriculum.  The background research referenced in this paper discussed the need for establishing student knowledge of the nature of science early in a child’s academic career because it is more difficult to reteach concepts about the nature of science than to teach them correctly at an early age.  Although a large quantity of space in the paper was devoted to this curricular issue, the questions in the survey were not designed to identify issues of this perceived problem. Since there were only five questions on the survey, it would be reasonable to expect this phenomenon to be measured in the instrument.

 

            The survey had only five questions which each had three choices from which to answer. Each topic on the nature of science was investigated using only one question. If students misinterpreted the question or choices of answers of a particular question, then there would be no valid data gathered on that topic. If there were two questions presented on the survey that addressed each topic, resulting in a total of ten questions, the data on each topic could be reinforced. If students answered in similar ways on each of the two questions pertaining to the same topic, then their answers would be considered legitimate. If students answered in two different ways regarding the same topic, then it could be assumed that students misinterpreted some information in the question or in the choices of answer. The validity of student answers could have been improved if two questions per topic, rather than one question, were presented on the survey.

 

            In the paper, it is not clear whether the 100 field test students were from the same population as the surveyed population. If the students were the same students, then they could be unfairly influenced because they would see the same test twice. This is especially true if the 6th grade students who were interviewed in order to clarify reading issues were from the same population as the surveyed students. In probing for clarity, the researchers could unduly influence student answers on the subsequent survey by revealing the more appropriate answers.

 

            Researchers conclude in the paper that “Although the reason is not clear at present, it is apparent that elementary students already possess a distorted view of scientific knowledge. Therefore, it may be more productive to teach students about the NOS at the elementary school level than to remedy secondary students’ inadequate understanding.”  This claim is not connected to data which illuminates two purposes of the study: the measure of growth of student knowledge about the nature of science and how ideas about the nature of science are influenced by culture. Since the analysis of the data does not discuss the adequacy of understanding of the nature of science at an elementary level, it is not logical for the researchers to make such a claim in the conclusion. If the researchers wanted to study the adequacy of knowledge of the nature of science at the elementary level, they should have chosen students from grades lower than 6th grade, since it is the final year of elementary school. The researchers could have mentioned this idea in the implications section of the paper, but it was misplaced in the conclusion section.

 

Suggestions for Improvement

            In order to address an already documented problem with reteaching older students the nature of science, the study could be expanded to include younger students. There seems to be a great deal of research on the topic of teaching lower elementary students concepts of the nature of science instead of trying to eliminate misconceptions of older students. The study addressed what students know about the nature of science, so it is a natural progression to extend the examination of these ideas to the lower elementary level. It was mentioned in the paper that lower elementary students have difficulty expressing what they know in a legitimate way, but accommodations could be made in the study in order to extract some evidence about their knowledge. Students could verbally explain their answers while being videotaped. The resulting videos could be coded for further information about their depth of knowledge. Examining earlier elementary grade students would help to obtain a clearer picture of when the distortion of the learning of the nature of science has occurred.

 

            The survey could be strengthened by adding five more questions that are parallel to the current questions. Then surveys could be analyzed to see if student answers regarding a parallel topic were the same. This process could help to confirm the answers of the students because it would provide another check to see if both students and researchers interpret the questions in the same way. Another confirmation of persuasive results would be the multiple administration of the instrument to the same students. Some research indicates that middle school students change the way they think about topics in very short spans of time.  In other words, middle school students change their mind often. If the survey was given on two different days to the same students, their answers could be compared for any aberration.

 

            One of the purposes of the survey was to compare the understanding of the nature of science across cultures. The comparisons described in the paper were based on similar but not identical questions.. The study could be improved if researchers gave the same instrument to American and British students. In this way the data could be directly compared to clarify any similarities or differences among the cultures.