Students’ alternative frameworks: towards a linguistic and cultural interpretation

Abstract

The study attempts to show how students’ alternative frameworks can be explained in terms of linguistic and cultural effects. The interpretations are based on data provided by student dialogue associated with the theme: the nature of matter. Comparable groups of students in Tasmania and the Philippines were interviewed in their home languages: English, Tagalog and Ilocano, respectively. Two strategies were employed to deal with the task of differentiating between cultural and linguistic effects. The first involved a ‘triangulation’ comparison of student interview responses where the analysis was mainly at the level of discourse. The second strategy was based on comparative science vocabularies of the three languages concerned. The study is not simply about English and Philippines languages but attempts to provide insights into the more general debate about the relationship of language to perception and the robustness of different language(s) in dealing with established forms of scientific argument.