The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School Department of Curriculum and Instruction ON-LINE PEER REVIEW AND STUDENTS’ UNDERSTANDING OF THE NATURE OF SCIENCE A Thesis in Curriculum and Instruction by Bugrahan Yalvac © 2005 Bugrahan Yalvac Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy May, 2005 ii The thesis of Bugrahan Yalvac has been reviewed and approved* by the following: William S. Carlsen Professor of Education Thesis Advisor Chair of Committee Wenda K. Bauchspies Assistant Professor of Science, Technology, and Society and Women Studies Carla Zembal-Saul Assistant Professor of Education Thomas M. Dana Associate Professor of Education Patrick W. Shannon Professor of Education Coordinator for Graduate Programs in Curriculum and Instruction *Signatures are on file in the Graduate School iii ABSTRACT Understanding the Nature of Science (NOS) is an important objective of science for all. Researchers have proposed different strategies to teach the tenets of the NOS. Among the proposed strategies, most promising is an implicit and contextualized NOS teaching strategy, especially when consideration is given to the sociological NOS and the social constructivist view of science. This study explores a group of college students’ understanding of the NOS, with a particular emphasis on the sociological NOS understanding and the social view of science. The participants in this study completed an implicit and contextualized NOS instruction, a College Peer Review (CPR) project. The CPR project was designed to engage college students in an authentic scientific investigation through its original research, on-line collaboration, and peer review. The phenomena under investigation were students’ conceptual ecologies of the NOS and their experiences with the activities of the CPR project. The design of this investigation was a collective case study, it was instrumental with multiple cases. Five science education college students were purposively selected from a class of 21, all of whom participated in the CPR project. The primary data were collected through pre and post-interviews. A semi-structured NOS interview protocol designed by the researcher guided the interview conversations. The protocol questions searched for interviewees’ understanding of the selected NOS tenets. Another semi- structured interview protocol was utilized to illuminate participants’ experiences with the activities of the CPR project. The secondary data were collected through an on-line iv philosophy of science questionnaire, before and after the CPR activities. Using another on-line questionnaire, participants’ demographics and other relevant information were collected. The interviews’ verbatim and participants’ written responses were analyzed utilizing the constant comparative method. Within-case analyses were performed to identify participants’ pre and post conceptions of the NOS and their experiences with the CPR project. The commonalities of changes in participants’ conceptions of the NOS and their experiences with the project, derived from a cross-case analysis, were reported as the study findings. The analyses revealed that students’ understanding of the NOS were changed and in the sense developed, in favor of a more social constructivist view of science. The dramatic differences observed in participants’ pre and post responses were in their conceptualizations of the sociological NOS. After the project was completed, participants portrayed science as socially constructed. Participants did not change their positions regarding the empirical, tentative, subjective, value-laden, and a human endeavor characteristics of science but they enhanced their arguments regarding the sociological NOS. It was expected that students would not change their positions regarding the aforementioned tenets of the NOS, because the project did not deliver some NOS ideologies explicitly. The analyses of experiences with the CPR project revealed that participants mostly liked the original research and large scale aspects of the project. Participants found the on-line peer review aspect of the project unique. They reported that they would use a similar peer review system with their students when they begin teaching. Participants suggested not utilizing anonymous feedback, but making the reviewers v known to the authors. According to the participants, providing eponymous feedback would improve the quality of the reviews. Better coordination of campuses to provide prompt feedback, the use of different organisms in addition to plant seeds, and second time experimenting were some of the other recommendations made by the students. The sociological NOS is often not addressed in the research context of teaching about the NOS, though it lies on the border between the logical positivist and the social constructivist views of science. Peer review as commonly used in real scientific practice is an important aspect of science and it has the potential to illustrate to students how scientific knowledge is generated. Peer review is not currently taught in schools as part of the scientific method(s). An instructional strategy that draws upon the sociological NOS and peer review can provide meaningful insights in teaching and learning about science and the NOS. This study promotes teaching the NOS tenets through authentic scientific investigations. The research findings provide evidence that students develop an understanding of the sociological NOS when they are provided with opportunities to engage in the implicit and contextualized NOS instruction, in which the sociological NOS and authenticity of scientific practice guide the activities. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES .....................................................................................................x LIST OF TABLES.......................................................................................................xi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.........................................................................................xii Chapter 1 Introduction ................................................................................................1 1.1 Problem...........................................................................................................2 1.2 Significance of the Study................................................................................4 1.3 The Sociological Nature of Science (NOS)....................................................6 1.4 Research Questions.........................................................................................9 1.5 Organization of the Study...............................................................................11 Chapter 2 Theoretical Issues.......................................................................................15 2.1 Philosophies of Science ..................................................................................15 2.1.1 Deductive versus Inductive Reasoning ................................................16 2.1.2 Realism.................................................................................................18 2.1.3 Logical Positivism................................................................................20 2.2 Scientific Knowledge in Texts........................................................................22 2.3 Kuhnian Perspective .......................................................................................25 2.3.1 The Dilemma between Popper and Kuhn.............................................28 2.4 Sociology of Scientific Knowledge................................................................32 2.5 School Science in the Continuum...................................................................36 2.6 Implications to School Science.......................................................................38 2.7 Scientific Literacy...........................................................................................40 2.8 Students’ and Teachers’ Views of the Nature of Science (NOS)...................41 2.9 Dilemmas on the Definitions of the NOS.......................................................43 2.10 Emerging Critiques of Scientific Literacy....................................................46 2.11 Emerging Critiques of the NOS....................................................................48 2.12 Teaching and Learning about the NOS ........................................................52 2.13 The Categorization of the NOS Instructions ................................................54 2.14 Paradoxical Assumption: Explicit and Decontextualized NOS Instruction......................................................................................................57 2.15 Revisiting Scientific Literacy .......................................................................60 Chapter 3 Context: College Peer Review Project.......................................................64 3.1 Overview.........................................................................................................64 3.2 Authentic Scientific Investigation ..................................................................65 3.3 College Peer Review (CPR) Project...............................................................72 3.3.1 Introduction of the CPR Project in Participating Classrooms..............73 vii 3.3.2 Original Research .................................................................................75 3.3.3 On-line (and other) Collaborations.......................................................78