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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Findings and Conclusion

The results of statistical analysis summarized in Table II and Table III indicate that the 12-week creative-IHVs treatment in Experiment 1 has not only substantially increased students' originally limited understanding of the creative NOS (19.04 -> 23.18) but also resulted in a concomitant reduction in their strong belief in the testable NOS (31.90 -> 31.03) whereas the testable-IHVs treatment in Experiment 2 caused both a moderate increase in students' enthusiastic support for the testable NOS (29.31 ->31.60) and a concomitant decrease in their limited understanding of the creative NOS (21.59 -> 19.62). Figure 2 and Figure 3 further reveal that the status of the creative and testable NOS conceptions for both treatment groups consistently move against each other from pretest to posttest as if they were riding on the opposite ends of a seesaw.

Taken together, these findings demonstrate that the creative and testable NOS conceptions are so negatively interconnected with each other in college students' mind that one can not raise the status of either conception without simultaneously lowering that of the other. As a result, it was concluded that there is indeed a negative, seesawing-at-a-distance type of interconnection between the creative and testable NOS conceptions in these students' conceptual ecology.

In addition to providing conclusive evidence for the existence of a negative interconnection between the creative and testable NOS conceptions in college students' conceptual ecology, this study also helps us develop a better understanding of how the relative status of these two rivaling NOS conceptions might change in response to instruction that focuses specifically on either one of them. Such understanding in turn leads us to see that the problem with current college science curricula in Taiwan is that they focus so exclusively on the testable aspect of the NOS that they make it extremely difficult for students to see both the dominant testable NOS and its creative rival simultaneously. As a result, it provides strong theoretical justification for shifting some of the focus of current college general science courses to revealing the inherent tentative and creative nature of science by supplementing them with a series of specially designed IHV stories that illuminate both the creative and the testable aspects of the nature of science.

CNSKS subscale

Experiment 1 (N=94)

Experiment 2(N=122)

pretest

posttest

pretest

posttest

Amoral

26.72

27.00

26.57

27.22

Creative

19.04

23.18

21.59

19.62

Developmental

29.07

29.41

28.67

29.98

Parsimonious

27.31

27.17

26.29

26.70

Testable

31.90

31.03

29.31

31.60

Unified

32.69

31.99

31.48

32.75

Note. CNSKS subscale score: Minimum = 8; Maximum = 40; Neural = 24.

Table II. Pretest and Posttest Means of CNSKS Subscale Scores

Creative

Testable

MD

s

t

MD

s

t

Experiment 1

4.14

0.70

  

-0.87

0.35

-2.46*

Experiment 2

-1.97

0.53

-3.72*

2.29

0.33

6.86*

*p < 0.05; MD = posttest mean score -pretest mean score; s = standard deviation of MD

Table III. Dependent t-test Results for CNSKS Creative and Testable Subscale Scores

Figure 2. The seesawing movement of creative vs. testable NOS conceptions in Experiment 1

Figure 3. The seesawing movement of creative vs. testable NOS conceptions in Experiment 2

Copyright (C) 2005 HKIEd APFSLT. Volume 6, Issue 2, Article 8 (Dec., 2005). All Rights Reserved.