31Mar 2017

UNDERSTANDING STUDENTS? VIEWS ON THE NATURE OF SCIENCE.

  • Department of Education, University of Delhi, Delhi, India.
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This study sheds some light on the commonly held views of senior secondary students about the nature of science. The study is framed around the philosophical positions on the nature of science and elaborate treatment of its various aspects as given by Lederman (2002). The study is purely qualitative and emergent and has been conducted in the Indian context. Samples of the study are school children who have opted science and the college students who are in the first year of graduation course with chemistry as one of their major subjects. In this study we have tried to describe how students perceive science to be and how it works along with trying to present an emergent relationship between their understanding of the nature of science and their interest in and appreciation of science. Furthermore, taking insights from many studies (Mc Comas, Almazora and Clough (1998)) that chemistry textbooks have an important role in shaping ideas and understanding of concepts in science and the nature of science, we reviewed the NCERT chemistry textbook looking for representation of some aspects of the nature of science. This book is chosen because of being relied upon heavily by students and teachers as the main source of information in Indian schools. Also, looking at the current trend worldwide (Nuffield Projects, PISA documents) there was a felt need how NCERT textbooks fare on the yardstick of parameters set to decipher the effectiveness of chemistry concepts taught to the children. We also have used in this study the Niaz and Fernandez (2008) framework to review a chapter on ?structure of atom? looking for the representation of Historical and Philosophical treatment of the chapter. Major findings reveal that college and school students had almost the same views about the nature of science. Textbook writing needs to incorporate the style of presentation which doesn?t distort the real science, its nature and how it develops. The textbook reviewed for the chapter ?structure of atom? was not written as per the historical and philosophical framework. Students didn?t appreciate the need to study older theories. Several such findings are enlisted in this study. Thus, this study presents how actually this study was conceptualized, took its course and finally manifested in the form of results, findings and discussions which we would like to share with you.

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[Bhawana Mishra. (2017); UNDERSTANDING STUDENTS? VIEWS ON THE NATURE OF SCIENCE. Int. J. of Adv. Res. 5 (Mar). 1957-1986] (ISSN 2320-5407). www.journalijar.com

bhawana
Dept of Education, DU

DOI:

Article DOI: 10.21474/IJAR01/3716      
DOI URL: https://dx.doi.org/10.21474/IJAR01/3716

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