Science Education's Need for a Theory of Epistemological Development

Abstract

Science educators have been interested in developing people’s understanding of the epistemology of science for a long time. Despite decades of research on students’ ideas, and decades of instructional reforms, it remains very hard to change students’ ideas about the nature of scientific knowledge and practice. There are essentially two specializations in science education related to epistemology: research on student’s conceptions of the nature of professional science (NOS) and research on students’ own efforts to make scientific meaning of the world through inquiry, modeling, argumentation, and so on. They have produced different conclusions about students’ understanding of the epistemology of science (Sandoval, 2005), and the fact that they are in very little dialogue with each other is a major obstacle to producing a coherent theory of epistemological development; a point I expand on below. Without such a theory, however, it is difficult to see how instructional experiences in school are likely to help students develop productive understandings of the epistemology of science. There are, at least, two reasons why we should want all students to leave high school with productive understandings of the epistemology of science. One is so that people understand what makes science science, to distinguish science as a field of human endeavor from other human endeavors. The second reason is to be able to use this understanding to identify scientific arguments and explanations from other kinds, and to be able to evaluate them in