Journal article
Investigating scientists’ views of the family resemblance approach to nature of science in science education
- Abstract:
- In this paper, we use the “Family Resemblance Approach” (FRA) as a framework to characterize how scientists view the nature of science (NOS). FRA presents NOS as a “system” that includes clusters or categories of ideas about the cognitive-epistemic and social-institutional aspects of science. For example, the cognitive-epistemic aspects include aims and values such as objectivity and scientific methods such as hypothesis testing. Social-institutional aspects refer to a range of components including social values such as honesty about evidence and institutional contexts of science such as research institutions. Characterized as such, NOS is thus a system of interacting components. The initial account of FRA was proposed by philosophers of science and subsequently adapted and extended for science education including through empirical studies. Yet, there is little understanding of the extent to which FRA coheres with scientists’ own depictions about NOS. Hence, an empirical study was conducted with scientists to investigate their views about FRA as well as their views of NOS using the FRA framework. In so doing, the research sought to explore the utility of FRA from scientists’ point of view. Qualitative and quantitative analysis of 17 Taiwanese scientists’ responses to a set of written questions indicates that scientists are in agreement with the FRA account of NOS, and they detail all aspects in their reference to NOS, although the social-institutional aspects are underrepresented in their depiction. Implications for further studies and science education are discussed.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 1.1MB, Terms of use)
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1007/s11191-021-00313-z
Authors
- Publisher:
- Springer Nature
- Journal:
- Science and Education More from this journal
- Volume:
- 33
- Issue:
- 1
- Pages:
- 73–102
- Publication date:
- 2022-01-03
- Acceptance date:
- 2021-12-01
- DOI:
- EISSN:
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1573-1901
- ISSN:
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0926-7220
- Language:
-
English
- Keywords:
- Pubs id:
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1230849
- Local pid:
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pubs:1230849
- Deposit date:
-
2022-07-21
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Wu and Erduran
- Copyright date:
- 2021
- Rights statement:
- ©2021 The Author(s). Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
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