understand her NOS conceptions are very descriptive in this first stage compared to the other participants. This allowed me to get a strong assessment of Denise’s conceptions half way through the optics unit, and after the most explicit emphasis on the NOS had taken place for the unit. The data show that Denise did, in fact, change some
fundamental understanding of the NOS, although this was not the result of explicit instruction but a result of her own experience which challenged her previous view.
Denise exhibits some interesting conceptions from the very beginning of the optics unit, further supporting her inclusion in this study. Like all students in this course, Denise participated in an initial questionnaire and the Pre-VNOS-PHYS survey. Like others, Denise tends to have multiple descriptions for what science is and why it should exist.
Science is “a useful endeavor because it is a form of an inquiry into the world around us and how it operates or exists” because it explains “why things are the way they are for many people.” The “things” which Denise is thinking of go beyond the natural world of science (or even the social/behavioral pursuits of social sciences), however, so that science can be an inquiry that could be seen in the way people dance or paint. In a similar vein, Denise lists on her questionnaire for “science coursework” not only courses in chemistry and biology but also art. Thus, Denise has some sense that “science is a means of inquiring and understanding,” but because it seems that “what science does is extend our understanding to everything,” so she is vague about the specifics of how science would come to understand or produce knowledge.
Although Denise’s first response to “what is science?” or similar probes is typically a response that suggests how science is a way to understand something, Denise is quick to follow up on this and emphasize that science will “allow people to change over time” or will “make our lives less difficult.” Denise knows (or at least claims) that science is a means of understanding, yet she understands it to have a very definite purpose. That purpose is a pragmatic one, reflecting that science should produce some kind of useful result.
Although Denise is notable in that she readily describes a science of art or a science of dancing, she is also able to contrast science to other disciplines to some extent. At first, in thinking about the comparison between art and science, Denise suspects that there are many similarities, since “they both consider what makes things up.” However, Denise begins to convince herself as she speaks that she does not really think that science and art are the same thing, since science deals so much with answering “why” and art deals more directly with “emotions.”
The Pre-VNON-PHYS questionnaire continues to show us that it may be most useful in eliciting singular responses that can only be evaluated the more discussion the researcher has with the participants. Denise’s case makes this point clear; her answers to the Pre-VNOS-PHYS show that she answers some areas as naïve, and the rest were transitional answers. Such views to questions do not reflect the conception the VNOS- PHYS is probing for to Denise (Table 17). This becomes clearer in the Post-VNOS- PHYS answers and interview.
Thus, Denise entered the course, and especially the optics unit, having a hard time thinking of science as a creative enterprise, but through the events that transpire in the
Table 17
Summary of Denise’s Views on Nature of Science at the Start of Wave Unit
Pre-VNOS
Questionnaire Paraphrase of Response
Views on Nature of Science
#1 • Science is understanding the world around us
• Science could be seen to be used more for improving medicine
Transitional view
#2 • The purpose of experiment is to find
plausible explanation
Naïve view
#3 • A theory is discovered and placed by nature
for us
• Developed from a hypothesis
Transitional view
#4 • Laws are theories that are proven
• Tested over and over
Transitional view
#5 • Scientific process has to follow a general
inquiry followed by experimentation and conclusion
Transitional view
#8 • Scientists are somewhat certain of the
specific value
• Uses math to prove the value
Transitional view
#9 • There is no conflict between scientists in
understanding the data
Naïve view
#10 • Scientist plan to carry out an experiment and
use creativity in doing it
Transitional view
unit and specifically in its labs, Denise came to change her conception of how creative processes contribute to scientific knowledge, “At first I thought you just had to be smart to do science. You don’t have to be creative to do an experiment.”
Denise views science as a way “to understand many things, ultimately in order to make life better for all of us.” This is especially apparent when Denise describes the health benefits of science and how it can make us live longer lives. Denise feels that science should be directed in ways to optimize how it can help humankind to better
survive. So, while Denise will first define science as a way of inquiry and creating explanations, the ultimate intent for science is to help us.
Unlike the other case studies, most of the conceptual change that we would anticipate could have taken place before the Pre-VNOS-PHYS probes were administered, since NOS concepts could have been taught explicitly before the optics unit. This being the case, the thing that I was most interested to see in Denise during this stage was an even richer description of her conceptual framework, made more valid with a greater range of probes.
Denise’s concept map (Figure 8) is worked on every day throughout the optics unit, at times working on it two times a day. Although this may be one reason why she seems so comfortable with this task, her experience with me and other probes makes her less inhibited than she otherwise would have been – a more likely reason is that, simply, she is ‘Denise’, and as such she tackles things enthusiastically, with a joyful attitude, and with no apologies. Even though Denise has a low score of nine on her concept map at the beginning as shown in Table 18, at the end it still becomes a profitable probe that leads to discussions of many facets of science and epistemology in general.
Table 18
Denise’s Pre-participation NOS Concept Map Score
Relationships 3
Levels 2
Branches 3
Cross links 1
Total score 9
Some foreshadowing of the subsequent analysis is in order here. These survey questions and the concept mapping administered at the beginning of the optics unit, brought to light certain conceptions. That is, Denise was made aware of her own
understanding of the creativity used in science as a result of taking the Pre-VNOS-PHYS. It may be the case that this explicit mentions of the concept made Denise realize that the concept actually existed and later allowed her to challenge her own conception.
Although this change in Denise’s conception was evident to me and to her, it is notable that Denise’s conception of the “creativity” of science was still different from what the VNOS was intended to measure and what science education reform advocates. This is revealed in the review of one VNOS statement in particular:
Ehsan: What do Scientists mean by theory?
Denise: I’d put they are discovered, they’re already there from Mother Nature. I think that we discover them more than they are created, but you have to be creative in order to discover. Even though Dr. Nave has referred to theory as evidence from nature.
Denise’s last sentence of this response is indicative of what her conceptions really are. Although she herself experiences the need to think creatively to solve problems in the lab, she sees the knowledge produced by science as being generated by nature more than it is created by humankind. Rightly, she refers to a course lecture that explicitly states that science is based on the evidence that nature provides, but Denise extends this idea to suggest that nature herself determines the knowledge that we have, rather than humans interpreting the evidence from nature.
For the developmental of VNOS, Denise showed an informed answer with the idea that scientific knowledge is tentative. In the interview session, Denise elaborated on this and made her views clearer, describing scientific knowledge “as something which is subject to change.” At first (and second) glance, Denise’s conceptions are what we hope them to be, yet in clarifying and exemplifying her understanding more clearly, it becomes evident that the ‘tentative’ aspect of scientific knowledge has a very specific meaning for Denise:
I think some of the things in scientific knowledge are beyond doubt, like good data that prove gravity, but there are some things like atomic theory and evolution theory which can be proven, but I think there’s some doubt in their conclusion.
Even though Denise states that scientific knowledge is tentative, she also views some things as being understood well enough that we no longer need to try to understand them any further. She uses the concept of gravity as an example of this, “like gravity, once we have the number you don’t have to collect data on it.” It may be that Denise, in thinking that the purpose of science is towards some applied ends, could consider certain
explanations to be ‘good enough’ to be put to use, and therefore would not need to be explained any further.
Ironically, that which Denise imagines we understand “beyond doubt,” such as gravity, may in fact be the least well-understood concepts in all of science. Denise is reserving the idea of tentative knowledge for that which seems less agreeable or likely to her, rather than as a facet of all scientific knowledge. Again, although the VNOS
questions begin to probe and hint at parts of Denise’s conceptions, they do not tell the entire story.
During the interview with Denise, I wanted her to expand on her answer regarding the speed of light question in the VNOS questionnaire. We talk about measuring the speed of light as 2.99 x 108 m/s and how a value for this is given in the text, and I ask Denise how certain the scientists and her are in such a value.
Scientists are certain about the speed of light; they measure it based on the distance traveled by a light for instance from the sun to the earth and time to find the speed, Well, I think things that can be proven by math – I think math is one of the cool things on how to prove things that work so I would be about 75% sure.
Denise acknowledges that “there could be some factors that we have not
accounted for in our calculation of the speed of light, but most likely we have a good idea of what it must be.” This is justified by the fact that we can show similar measurements made here on Earth, and especially that we can use mathematics to describe how such a calculation can be made.
As with other case study participants, Denise’s conceptions of “fact,” “law,” and “theory” reveal more about what she thinks of science than do they give us clear
definitions of these particular terms. The lack of connection between these terms is seen in Denise’s concept map, which contained only few terms in single relationship. Denise, upon being asked how to define these, immediately wants to go back to her class notes to
get the correct definitions, but she tries it on her own anyway. “Laws are usually theories that can be proven mathematically, by having a numerical relationship that can be shown over and over again and so much a part of our everyday life that no one would challenge to say it was incorrect.” When asked for an example, Denise suggests the Snell’s Law and identifying the change in angle due to medium change. Scientific laws and theories are more intimidating for Denise, and she starts by noting that in class they were
described as virtually the same kind of thing. Denise compares these to facts, noting that “A theory is an explanation that can be shown to occur over and over again, but can not necessarily be proven with concrete evidence like a law can that has a mathematical relationship and facts that can be seen over and over again.” Denise contrasts her present concepts of these terms to how she otherwise would have thought of them, laws as being “more absolute” and theories being more speculative.