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Diversity of Students' Views about Evidence, Theory, and the Interface between Science and Religion in an Astronomy Course
Author(s) -
Brickhouse Nancy W.,
Dagher Zoubeida R.,
Letts IV William J.,
Shipman Harry L.
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
journal of research in science teaching
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.067
H-Index - 131
eISSN - 1098-2736
pISSN - 0022-4308
DOI - 10.1002/(sici)1098-2736(200004)37:4<340::aid-tea4>3.0.co;2-d
Subject(s) - diversity (politics) , science education , mathematics education , context (archaeology) , class (philosophy) , nature of science , sociology , psychology , pedagogy , epistemology , paleontology , philosophy , biology , anthropology
Arguments for teaching about the nature of science have been made for several decades. The most recent science education policy documents continue to assert the need for students to understand the nature of science. However, little research actually explores how students develop these understandings in the context of a specific course. We examine the growth in students' understanding about the nature of astronomy in a one‐semester college course. In addition to student work collected for 340 students in the course, we also interviewed focus students three times during the course. In this article we briefly describe class data and discuss in detail how five students developed their ideas throughout the course. In particular, we show the ways in which students respond to instruction with respect to the extent to which they (a) demand and examine evidence used for justifying claims, (b) integrate scientific and religious views, and (c) distinguish between scientific and nonscientific theories. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 37: 340–362, 2000.