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Asia-Pacific
Forum on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 6, Issue 2, Article 8
(Dec., 2005) Ke-Sheng CHAN Exploring the dynamic interplay of college students' conceptions of the nature of science
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Asia-Pacific
Forum on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 6, Issue 2, Article 8
(Dec., 2005) Ke-Sheng CHAN Exploring the dynamic interplay of college students' conceptions of the nature of science
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Theoretical Base
The Conceptual Change Model of Learning (CCM) developed by Posner, et al. (1982), which recognizes the interdependence of students' views of the various aspects of NOS and conceives learning the NOS as a process of conceptual change involving the dynamic interplay of a complex network of interconnected NOS conceptions in students' conceptual ecology, provides the theoretical justification for this study.
According to Posner, et al. (1982), CCM views learning as a process of conceptual change that occurs against the background of learners' current conceptions and asserts that a person will accept a new conception only if the following conditions are met within the context of his or her conceptual ecology. First, the new conception must be intelligible. Second, the new conception must appear initially plausible. Third, the new conception must seem potentially fruitful. The extent to which a conception meets these three conditions is termed the status of that conception (Hewson & Thorley, 1989) and the more conditions a conception meets, the higher is its status. Learning a particular NOS conception thus implies that its status rises. However, since students' conceptions of the various aspects of the NOS do not exist in isolation from one another but are interconnected with one another in their conceptual ecology, raising the status of a particular NOS conception inevitably results in concomitant status-shifts in other closely connected NOS conceptions. Furthermore, since students' NOS conceptions are embedded in a web of inter-connected NOS conceptions and often come with their own "cognitive support group" (Strike & Posner, 1992, p. 154) that helps them resist modification, the learning of NOS inevitably involves the dynamic interplay of a complex network of interconnected NOS conceptions in students’ conceptual ecology and is best viewed as a dynamic mind-altering process in which the relative status of a particular NOS conception is raised above those of its competitors.
Because the way in which the various NOS conceptions are connected with one another in students' conceptual ecology determines how their relative status would change as each is being learned, one should in principle be able to infer the nature of their interconnections by investigating how the various NOS conceptions reposition themselves in students' conceptual ecology as the status of each conception is raised. As a direct application of this principle, this study tries to clarify the nature of the interconnection between the creative and testable NOS conceptions in college students' conceptual ecology by investigating, through a pair of IHV-assisted experiments, the effect of raising the status of the creative NOS conception in students' conceptual ecology on that of the testable NOS conception, and vice versa.
Copyright (C) 2005 HKIEd APFSLT. Volume 6, Issue 2, Article 8 (Dec., 2005). All Rights Reserved.
