When Interviewing: How Many is Enough?

Researchers need to know what is an acceptable number for interview work How does one decide the acceptable number of people to interview? Or one might ask what is an acceptable N size for interview work

The Rhetoric of Science Education Reform

Leon Lederman’s Project ARISE promotes a “physics first” reorganization of the secondary science curriculum. As a Nobel laureate in physics, his ideas have attracted considerable attention. Issues outside of physics, however, that Lederman does not appear ready to acknowledge will limit the impact Lederman hopes to achieve

Cultural Constructivist Approach to the Teaching of Evolution

Educators typically think that one teaches evolution to develop students\u27 conceptual understanding of evolution. It is assumed that if students understand evolution they will believe it. From a constructivist perspective it can be argued that understanding and belief, though related, are distinct concepts each of which is a potential goal for instruction. Though there are good reasons why belief should not be an instructional goal, achieving conceptual understanding requires that issues of belief be addressed. The point is that students are not likely to gain much understanding of something that they dismiss outright as unbelievable. What counts as believable for an individual rests on that person\u27s world view. This article argues that instruction on evolution can profitably begin with a dialogue on what counts as believable. Such a dialogue would be based on a study of the cultural history of Darwinism which would allow students to see how people in Darwin\u27s day wrestled with the same fundamental questions at issue today. The purpose of this strategy is to create a shared meaning in the classroom that certain fundamental questions are worth discussing and that the biological principles of evolution can contribute to that discussion. Thus, rather than trying to present evolution as a purely scientific issue, this article suggests the rather unorthodox strategy of explicitly addressing the social and cultural issues related to the topic of origins

Worldview Theory and Conceptual Change in Science Education

Once again science education finds itself in the midst of reform. Reform documents are too numerous to mention by name but they all share the same view that Americans know far too little science. Durant (1990) noted that even the well educated often know little science. Of course every reform document by its very nature offers a solution. Many in the science education research community see conceptual change as the emerging focus of science teaching (Wandersee, 1993, p. 319) and thus focus their research interests here as well. To borrow warfare metaphors, conceptual change activities are tactical devices used to reach small-scale objectives (i.e., individual science concepts) within a strategic framework for reaching the largescale objective of scientific literacy. For all its merits, my objection to the conceptual change model is that it uncritically accepts the strategic framework in which it operates. In my view, that framework involves a much too narrowly conceived notion of knowledge and the role knowledge plays in an individual\u27s life. The purpose of this article is to discuss the effect of a flawed strategy on the tactics of conceptual change and to draw attention to a broader view of knowledge from a worldview perspective. I begin by recounting a story from cultural anthropology. Readers may wonder at first what this story has to do with conceptual change and science education. Though perhaps not immediately apparent, there is a parallel with science education which I intend to make explicit in due course. In addition to illustrating a point, the decision to use the Resaldo story is illustrative of my assertion that achieving science for all will require a curricular view of science that places and integrates science within a community of disciplines

The \u3cem\u3eThinking about Science\u3c/em\u3e Survey Instrument (TSSO): An Instrument for the Quantitative Study of Socio-Cultural Sources of Support and Resistance to Science

Many scientists and science educators are concerned about the public’s ambiguous relationship with science and this public includes elementary teachers. Like many citizens, too many elementary teachers find science disconnected from everyday life and thinking. Science is a “school” subject - not an important part of everyday life. Some may believe that science conflicts with important personal beliefs they hold about other areas of life such as religion and art. Elementary teachers who feel this disconnection with science will at best approach science teaching as something one does if school authorities demand it. Given that we are now promoting constructivist approaches to science teaching among teachers who frequently face the challenges of multiculturalism, and in addition the rising challenges to science itself, society’s demands of elementary teachers is all the more greater. The demands increasingly require of teachers an engagement with science at a significant level of depth and sophistication. The research reported here is about developing new insight on the processes of elementary science teacher education and development, and in general the development of the public understanding of science, vis-à-vis social and cultural factors that contribute either to science resistance or affirmation of science. This document reports on the development of a quantitative instrument for assessing socio-cultural resistance to, and support for, science that can be employed in efforts to quantitatively document the presence or absence of significant cultural concerns

World View Theory and Science Education Research

This monograph is timely for the membership of NARST. As science educators probe teaching and learning in an endeavor to make sense of learning in classrooms, there is a need for theoretical frameworks to enable new questions to be posed and a correspondingly fresh set of responses to be obtained. World view is a framework that can be applied to research on teaching and learning science and fits well with the trend towards studies that are interpretive in nature. The number of science education researchers using ethnographic techniques in science education research is increasing steadily and theories and methods that emanate from cultural anthropology are appropriate tools in efforts to unravel the social structure of science classrooms

The Competing Influence of Secularism and Religion on Science Education in a Secular Society

We live in country where by Constitution there can be no religious test for public office. On the other hand, we have a Bill of Rights that guarantees the free exercise of religion. We call this a secular system of government, and sometimes go so far as to use Jefferson\u27s phrase that there is a wall between church and state. For the most part this secular system of government comports well with the teachings of Christianity based on Jesus’ remark that one should render unto Caesar that which belongs to Caesar, and unto God that which belongs to God. John Richard Neuhaus once remarked, our’s is a naked public square. The reality however, is that the public square abhors a philosophical vacuum; and our so-called secular society has never really been a naked public square. Until the mid 20th century, for better or for worse, the philosophy permeating the public square was loosely that of Protestant Christianity. That effectively ended with a Supreme Court decision in the early 1960s banning prayer in schools. I suppose that many thought that we had arrived at where we should have been all along, that is, at a naked public square. But I suggest the public square really does abhor a philosophical vacuum and that today we often find philosophical secularism competing with various religious ideas for prominence in the public square. When it comes to science education in the public schools, I suggest that what we really need is something that might be called methodological secularism. The notion of methodological secularism is an amalgam of ideas from Paul de Vries and Wilfred M. McClay. de Vries’ subject is actually naturalism in the sciences, which causes problems for theists given naturalism’s disavowal of supernaturalism. de Vries, however, argues that naturalism, can be, and is practiced in science regardless of any position on the supernatural. This form of naturalism he calls methodological naturalism, as opposed to philosophical naturalism. Just as de Vries argues that there are two legitimate ways to look at naturalism, Wilfred McClay argues that there are two legitimate ways to look at secularism. His and Paul de Vries arguments are analogous and so I propose that philosophical secularism be distinguished from methodological secularism. Naturalism and secularism represent philosophies that are deeply antithetical to theism. Methodological naturalism and methodological secularism, in contrast, shed anti supernaturalism presuppositions and promote the instrumental use of naturalism and secularism. As stated by McClay, secularism: can be understood as an opponent of established belief--including a nonreligious establishment--and a protector of the rights of free exercise and free association. Second, it can be understood as a proponent of established unbelief and a protector of strictly individual expressive rights. The former view, on the one hand, is a minimal, even negative understanding of secularism, as a freedom from establishmentarian imposition. For it, the secular idiom is merely a provisional lingua franca that serves to facilitate commerce among different kinds of belief, rather than establish some new absolute language, an Esperanto of postreligious truth. The balance of this paper addresses the difference between philosophical and methodological secularism, the problems for science education posed by both religion and philosophical secularism, and what the practical application of methodological secularism in science education might look like

Alternative Constructions of Science and Science Education

I want to begin today with two short personal remarks. My field of research at home is the cultural study of science education. In other words, I am interested in what is commonly called the culture of science and how that becomes interpreted in science education by teacher and curriculum. I am interested in the variation of culture among American students, cultural variations grounded in family and community and brought to the classroom. I am interested in the cultural interactions that are precipitated by the meeting of cultures in the science classroom. In my current work I use worldview concepts to examine the various ways students and teachers have come to understand the natural world and the manner and extent to which science has informed that understanding. I came to this avenue of research from my experiences as a lecturer in science education at the University of Sokoto, Nigeria. My research is grounded in an African experience, and what I have to say today I have said at home. Now I am not naive. I am fully aware of great differences between the two continents - it is simply that I have found that certain themes are of broad geographical importance. My second personal remark is that I do not think that I have much to say that many of you have not already heard or said. However, I trust that the context of my presentation will stimulate and precipitate new thinking about these known but very important ideas. In brief the ideas are first that educators have historically thought of science as a singularity -being above culture; that however, has led at least tacitly to the view that science education ought also to be a singularity. Indeed, science education around the globe is remarkably similar. The second idea is that regardless of one\u27s position on the singularity of science proper; one ought to consider alternative, culturally-grounded constructions of science education, that is, there ought to be heterogeneity in science education

Traditional Culture and Science Education in Africa: Merely Language Games?

I want to begin today with two short personal remarks. My field of research at home is the cultural study of science education. In other words, I am interested in what is commonly called the culture of science and how that becomes interpreted in science education by teacher and curriculum. I am interested in the variation of culture among American students, cultural variations grounded in family and community and brought to the classroom. I am interested in the cultural interactions that are precipitated by the meeting of cultures in the science classroom. In my current work I use worldview concepts to examine the various ways students and teachers have come to understand the natural world and the manner and extent to which science has informed that understanding. I came to this avenue of research from my experiences as a lecturer in science education at Usmano Dan Fodio University, Sokoto, Nigeria. My research in the USA, in other words, is grounded in an African experience. My research leads me to think anew about an important question that must be answered by any one in science education: What knowledge are we thinking about when we think about the knowledge to be learned as the objective in science education? This question be approached from both internal and external perspectives. The internal perspective is the more obvious one. It is the perspective of science disciplines. From an internal perspective the question is about what topics shall be taught in biology, chemistry, physics, earth science and so on. From an external, or cultural, perspective the question is about what place scientific thought will hold and how will it be interpreted within the worldview of an educator person. This also may be phrased as: What scope and force should science have vis-à-vis other modes of thought such as social, political, religious, aesthetic and so on? Because the external perspective frames the internal perspective, the external perspective is the more fundamental. Using the context of Africa, this paper explores the external perspective on science education

Education Research Will Not Profit From Radical Constructivism

There are moments when philosophy captures the educator\u27s attention. Such an occasion was the opening night of the 1990 annual meeting of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching. Ernst von Glasersfeld gave a highly stimulating lecture on radical constructivism. Radical constructivism is an epistemological philosophy that divorces knowing from any notion that reality is the referent of knowledge. Radical constructivists argue that adopting this view, rather than realist views, will help teachers improve science instruction. This, however, would mean a dramatic shift away from critical realism which has deep historical roots in Western thought, and which arguably was critical for the development of modern science. Furthermore, one must question what effect radical constructivism would actually have on science teaching. Many would argue that there is little reason to think that ontological beliefs are a more critical factor in teacher behavior than social and material factors. Nevertheless, ontological belief is an interesting aspect of culture and could be incorporated into a general discussion of cultural issues during a program of science teacher education. The thorough discussion of ontological issues, however, is probably best left for graduate education