Undergraduate science research projects and students - School of ...

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Undergraduate Learning in Science Project Working Paper 5benefit of society 2 . In addition to these factors, many students at the end oftheir project described how scientific enquiry develops in coherent fields ofwork. This increasing emphasis on the coherent development of a field isevident in the students’ responses to the question: ‘Why do you think thatsome scientific work stands the test of time whilst other scientific work isforgotten?’ Significantly more students referred to a coherent field as beingan influence on whether scientific work stands the test of time. This evidencesuggests that project work encourages many students to extend their image ofscience profile to include a view of science as involving coherent researchprogrammes.The nature of scientific knowledge claimsMost of the students in our sample referred to experiments as being used toevaluate existing theories or ideas. A minority of our student sample have aview that data alone can be used as a scientific description of phenomena 3 .A majority of our student sample felt that theoretical ideas are evaluatedsolely through empirical processes. There was little reference to the impactsocial factors might have on the acceptance or rejection of knowledgeclaims 4 (such social factors might include the status of the individualscientists involved, or the status of the journal in which the research ispublished). Indeed our data suggests that this position increased towards theend of project work 5 . Students also talked more about critical experimentalprocedures in their final interview 6 . There was little consideration of thestrategic aspects of scientific work such as identifying the important scientificquestions, or being aware of how a finding relates to the work of otherscientists.The epistemological profile also shows that a minority of students madeexplicit statements that knowledge claims go beyond the data 7 . Few studentsstated that knowledge claims were conjectural in nature and might involve2 This is shown in table 1 on page 16 for students’ discussions about how scientists decidewhich questions to investigate, and also in section B (the nature of lines of scientificenquiry) of the epistemological and sociological profile for our student sample in appendixB.3 Table 2, page 23. See also the balance between code Aa (knowledge claims as description)and codes Ab (knowledge claims as provable) in appendix B.4 This is shown in the balance between codes Ab(i) - knowledge claims as provable onempirical grounds - and Ab(ii) - knowledge claims as provable on social grounds - in theepistemological profile.5 Table 5 on page 51 shows that significantly more students referred to empirical evidenceas being important in the resolution of conflicts in their final interview.6 Table 3 on page 31 shows that many more students mentioned the use of controls, the needfor reproducibility, and consideration of errors towards the end of their project.7 This is shown in the balance between codes Ab - knowledge claims as provable - andcodes Ac - knowledge claims go beyond the data - in the epistemological profile on page115.74
Undergraduate Learning in Science Project Working Paper 5the scientist in making assumptions or extrapolations beyond the availabledata.Rowell and Cawthron (1982) found that undergraduate students tend toadvance a rational, hypothetico-deductive view of scientific investigationrather than a Kuhnian view of science as subject to occasional revolutions inwhat is accepted as scientific knowledge followed by periods of ‘normal’science. The data reviewed above suggests that the students in our sample seescience as progressing through a series of puzzle-solving activities, whichsteadily improve our scientific understanding. Indeed this viewpoint wasenhanced through project work. In response to the question: ‘Why do youthink that some scientific work stands the test of time whilst other scientificwork is forgotten?’ a minority of students described science as involving‘revolutionary’ work which give rise to sudden advances in scientificunderstanding 8 . Thus our findings tend to support those of Rowell andCawthron (1982). Such a finding is perhaps not surprising given that thestudents’ research projects were essentially puzzle-solving activities whichtypify the day-to-day activities of most professional scientists.The social dimensionThe epistemological and sociological profile in appendix B shows thatstudents gave little emphasis to the social dimension of science. For instance,whilst students recognised that scientists often work as a community, howthese communities might influence the nature of lines of enquiry or theevaluation of knowledge claims was not emphasised any more at the end thanat the beginning of project work. There was virtually no mention of keyscientific institutions.Fleming (1988) reports that the images of science held by his sample ofundergraduate scientists investigated using the VOSTS probes were notsignificantly different from those images of science held by high schoolstudents. Our study has shown that for our sample of final year undergraduateproject students there are some significant changes of emphasis - particularlyin the existence of coherent lines of scientific research and the significance ofcareful procedures for the collection of reliable and valid scientific data.7.2 What significance can be attributed to our findings?In order to work as professional scientists, or to understand science as anactivity, it is necessary to have an appropriate profile of epistemological andsociological reasoning to draw upon in particular contexts. In some cases, itis appropriate to recognise the model-like status of scientific knowledge. Inthe case of Student G’s project, for example, discrepancies between data andtheory might well be attributable to the model-like nature of the theory itself.In other cases, it might be more appropriate to view particular items ofscientific knowledge as taken-for-granted, and focus upon the quality of data8 Table 4 on page 4175
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