Developing the Inner Scientist: Book Club Participation and Epistemological Growth  Phyllis Baudoin Griffard, PhD Tayseer MoslehSaad Kubba

NSEUS ConferenceJune 21, 2011 

Warrant

• The leap from science student to scientist is large. Doing so requires becoming more comfortable with the Nature of Science as a tentative, evolving body of knowledge that is socially constructed and culturally influenced.

• Most scientists do not come to understand these features of the academic science enterprise explicitly, but implicitly through lived experiences.

• In a compressed two-year pre-medical curriculum, what can be done to spur the maturity of students as scientists with regard to these dispositions?

Background: What is NOS?

• Nature of Science is a construct that refers to the values and beliefs inherent to scientific knowledge and its development (Lederman 1992). Those with an informed view recognize that science:

– Is empirical

– Is tentative

– Is subjective (theory-laden),

– Is socially and culturally embedded, and

– Necessarily involves human inference, imagination and creativity

– And they distinguish observation from inference and theory from law

Background: Important to Scientists?

• “Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds,” Feynmann

Research Questions

• How well do WCMCQ pre-medical students understand Nature of Science?

• Can epistemological growth with regard to NOS be observed over time?

• Does participation in a science book club contribute to this growth?

Why might book club participation improve NOS understanding?

– These non-fiction works chronicle the evolution of ideas with respect to Darwinian medicine, genetics and host/pathogen relationships

– Lots of history, lots of research studies, lots of claims and speculation

How was students’ understanding of NOS assessed?

• Questionnaires

– Views of Nature of Science open-ended questionnaire, Version C (VNOS-C) (Lederman, Abd-el-Khalick et al., 1992)

• Focus group interviews

• Document analysis: homework and exam responses

VNOS-C Questionnaire: 9 questions

1. What, in your view, is science? What makes science (or a scientific discipline such as physics, biology, etc.) different from other disciplines of inquiry (e.g., religion, philosophy)?

2. What is an experiment? Does the development of scientific knowledge require experiments? If yes, explain why. Give an example to defend your position. If no, explain why. Give an example to defend your position.

3. After scientists have developed a scientific theory (e.g., atomic theory, evolution theory), does the theory ever change? If you believe that scientific theories do not change, explain why. Defend your answer with examples. If you believe that scientific theories do change: (a) Explain why theories change; (b) Explain why we bother to learn scientific theories. Defend your answer with examples.

4. Is there a difference between a scientific theory and a scientific law? Illustrate your answer with an example.

5. Science textbooks often represent the atom as a central nucleus composed of protons (positively charged particles) and neutrons (neutral particles) with electrons (negatively charged particles) orbiting the nucleus. How certain are scientists about the structure of the atom? What specific evidence do you think scientists used to determine what an atom looks like?

 

VNOS-C (continued)

6. Science textbooks often define a species as a group of organisms that share similar characteristics and can interbreed with one another to produce fertile offspring. How certain are scientists about their characterization of what a species is? What specific evidence do you think scientists used to determine what a species is?

7. It is believed that about 65 million years ago the dinosaurs became extinct. Of the hypothesis formulated by scientists to explain the extinction, two enjoy wide support. The first, formulated by one group of scientists, suggests that a huge meteorite hit the earth 65 million years ago and led to a series of events that caused the extinction. The second hypothesis, formulated by another group of scientists, suggests that massive and violent volcanic eruptions were responsible for the extinction. How are these different conclusions possible if scientists in both groups have access to and use the same set of data to derive their conclusions?

 

VNOS-C (continued)

8. Some claim that science is infused with social and cultural values. That is, science reflects the social and political values, philosophical assumptions, and intellectual norms of the culture in which it is practiced. Others claim that science is universal. That is, science transcends national and cultural boundaries and is not affected by social, political, and philosophical values, and intellectual norms of the culture in which it is practiced. If you believe that science reflects social and cultural values, explain why. Defend your answer with examples. If you believe that science is universal, explain why. Defend your answer with examples.

9. Scientists perform experiments/investigations when trying to find answers to the questions they put forth. Do scientists use their creativity and imagination during their investigations? If yes, then at which stages of the investigations do you believe scientists use their imagination and creativity: planning and design, data collection, after data collection? Please explain why scientists use imagination and creativity. Provide examples if appropriate. If you believe that scientists do not use imagination and creativity, please explain why. Provide examples if appropriate.

 

Mixed Methods

• Data sources

– Pre-test: VNOS-C to incoming pre-med students in August 2009

– Post-test: VNOS-C to same students in April 2010

– Focus group interviews with book club/non book club in March 2010

– Reflections from book club homework

– Book club essay option on exam

• Analysis

– Rubric for scoring VNOS-C for each of 5 aspects of NOS as naïve, transitional or informed

– Coding of transcripts of focus groups and documents

Fall 09Transitional

Spring 10Informed

Can epistemological growth be observed over time?

All students pre post p-value

book club 1.68 2.00 0.01*

non book club 1.55 1.89 < 0.001*

p-value 0.11 0.32

Focus Groups pre post p-value

Book Club 1.72 2.28 0.008*

Non Book Club 1.49 2.01 0.005*

p-value 0.20 0.14

Insights logged in book club homework

• Social/Cultural influence: “A long time ago, they were certain that we had 24 pairs of chromosomes; it is unnerving that this was an undisputed ‘fact’ for 30 years. How do we know NOW for certain that there are 23 chromosomes? (It is funny that the guy abandoned his work on the liver cell when he found that it had 23.)”

• Creativity: “The importance of a scientist’s imagination and ability to create plausible scenarios to explain certain phenomena, which is illustrated in Garrod’s formulation of his inborn errors of metabolism hypothesis”

• Tentative, social construction: Chosen as a favorite quote: “All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.”

Conclusions

• As a group, students improved over the year regardless of book club participation, but the book club group started with slightly more informed views than the non-book club.

• Therefore book club attracts rather than produces students who express more informed NOS views

• It is likely that multiple factors contribute

– Writing courses improve critical thinking and more sophisticated expression

– I attend to NOS implicitly in biology instruction

Acknowledgments

WCMC-Q Class of 2015

Ziyad Mahfoud for statistical assistance

Qatar National Research Fund for UREP support

You!