Worldview Theory Research Articles

Nursing Education Model: Caring From a Christian Cultural Perspective

The purpose of this paper is to present the Cedarville University curricular model for nursing education. The Cedarville University model presents a Christian, theistic worldview within the Baptist tradition. Throughout the literature on caring, worldview teachings abound. Aworldview provides the presuppositional base used to guide actions and behaviors fundamental to the practice of caring in nursing. This paper begins with a general overview of the Cedarville University Christian, theistic worldview as a basis for nursing education and practice. Next, the curriculum model featuring 4 major curricular organizers-godly living, care, culture, and information managementis presented, with implementation of the model in achieving professional nursing competency outcomes.

Worldview and health promoting behavior: a causal model.

The present study investigated the manner in which Pepper's (1942) worldview theory relates to health promoting behavior. A sample of 259 subjects completed a battery of inventories measuring worldview, health promoting behavior (HPB), social class, and sex. The data were analyzed by means of structural equation modeling using the statistical program for the social sciences (SPSS) and the analysis of moment and structure (AMOS) computer programs. The results support the idea that a modest relationship exists between worldview and HPB, with organismic thinkers more likely than mechanistic thinkers to engage in HPB. There was also a slight indirect effect of sex on worldview and HPB, with women more likely to endorse an organismic worldview and therefore more likely to engage in HPB than men. No relationship was found between socioeconomic status and HPB.

World view analysis of knowledge in a rural village: Implications for science education

This article describes an empirical qualitative analysis of some of the traditional practices and beliefs, with respect to health regimens and marine-related activities, which operate in the daily lives of people in the village of “Seablast,” Trinidad and Tobago. The purpose of the investigation was to gain an understanding of these practices and beliefs and the interpretive framework that underpins them, and to explore how these might impinge on the learning and teaching of school science in such a context. Kearney's world view theory was employed as the framework for the analysis. The investigation reveals that the traditional wisdom in Seablast is a pervasive system, consisting of several concepts and principles, some of which are similar to those of conventional science, whereas others differ significantly. There are also some similarities between the world view of the villagers and that of science. However, the procedures used by villagers to effect these tenets are often quite different from those employed in science. The article argues that science students and teachers who are exposed to the traditional wisdom and who have some level of commitment to it are likely to find that, to some extent, they are required to function in two worlds—the traditional world and the world of science. Current research suggests that the “boundary crossing” between these worlds may be difficult or even hazardous for some people. The recommendation is made that school science curricula for contexts such as Seablast must be fashioned from a cultural perspective, with an emphasis on providing aids for students to effect the boundary crossing successfully. This would put students in a better position to evaluate both their traditional practices and beliefs and conventional science so that they could make appropriate choices for the conduct of their lives. © John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Sci Ed 83:77–95, 1999.

The Return of the God Hypothesis

Historian of science Frederic Bumham has stated that the "God hypothesis" is now more respectable hypothesis than at any time in the last one hundred years. This essay explores recent evidence from cosmology, physics, and biology, which provides epistemoiogical support, though not proof, for belief in God as conceived by a theistic worldview. It develops a notion of epistemoiogical support based upon explanatory power, rather than just deductive entailment. It also evaluates the explanatory power of theism and its main metaphysical competitors with respect to several classes of scientific evidence. The cmclusion follows that theism explains a wide ensemble of metaphysically-significant evidences more adequately and comprehensively than other major worldviews or metaphysical systems. Thus, unlike much recent scholarship that characterizes science as either conflicting with theistic belief or entirely neutral with respect to it, this essay concludes that scientific evidence actually supports such.

Worldview theory and conceptual change in science education

Conceptual change is simple idea. If students are given an opportunity to construct scientifically orthodox conceptions, if they then come to see that these conceptions are more intelligible, plausible, and fruitful than other conceptions, the students will change their conceptions for scientific ones. This rationalistic view is embedded in a narrowly conceived notion of the role knowledge plays in an individual's life and fails to recognize that students' everyday conceptions differ from science because they serve a different purpose. Conceptual change instruction is intended to foster a scientific view of the world. This goal is wrong-headed. Science needs to be joined with the other school disciplines in the common goal of developing student world-views of which science is one articulated component. Conceptual change should become more plausible for students when they have been invited to a discourse on what are the important questions of life, what are the various answers, and what does science have to contribute to the common human quest for a meaningful life. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Investigation of worldview theory in a south african context

AbstractThis article reports on an exploratory investigation carried out to identify conceptions of some components of worldview, based on logicostructural worldview theory, held by science student teachers in a South African context. It explores relationships among worldviews, student characteristics, and scientific concepts. The sample included 48 final‐year science student teachers. Data were gathered by a questionnaire with follow‐up interviews. Questions were based on Kearney's model of worldview with stimulus items related to each of seven worldview categories. Responses were categorized and examined for possible relationships. Results of the investigation indicated that students' conceptions of time and distance were nonmechanistic and psychologically bound and that authoritarian scientific explanation was considered as sufficient for proof. Some significant relationships were found between items as well as between field of study and scientific conceptions.

College students' conceptualizations of nature: An interpretive world view analysis

AbstractThe research reported in this article addressed the fundamental question, What do students believe about the nature of the world around them? The research specifically addressed college students' fundamental beliefs about nature, that is, the natural world. Data were collected via semistructured interviews involving a set of elicitation devices used to encourage students to talk about the natural world. The analysis of interview transcripts yielded inferences about student fundamental beliefs based on logicostructural world view theory. These beliefs are presented in the form of a concept map and characterized by a set of bipolar descriptive codes: naturalism and religion; chaos and order; mystery and knowledge; function and purpose; mundane and special; science/no science. Perhaps the most intriguing observation of the study was science's apparent lack of influence on students' beliefs about nature even though these students had been successful in college level science courses.

Evolution by Blind Chance

Ever since Charles Darwin first published his revolutionary book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, there has been considerable disagreement among Christians concerning both the truth of evolutionary theory and its possible reconciliation with the Bible. Some Christians have taken the so-called ‘fundamentalist creationist’ position believing in a literal interpretation of the first few chapters of Genesis. Others have adopted so-called ‘theistic evolutionist’ views accepting to various different degrees Darwinian ideas about origins. One point however on which most Christians (and indeed non-Christians) are agreed, is that an evolutionary process based on blind chance must necessarily conflict with all possible theistic world views and stands irreconcilable with the biblical text. It is this assertion which in this essay I hope to refute, as based on misunderstanding of the meaning of blind chance, of the mechanism of evolution and of the involvement of God in the universe.

More Thought on Thought and Talk

Can dumb animals think? Since anything from the merest flickerings of sensory consciousness to highly abstract cogitation might be taken to count as thought, the first step towards an answer is to determine what kind of thinking is meant. Once this is done it appears that the question may be answered merely as a corollary of a general theory of thought. If, for instance, thinking is just the acquisition of certain behavioural dispositions, then languageless animals can think provided they can acquire the relevant dispositions. Or, again, if thinking is silent speech, dumb creatures evidently cannot think. And so on. What is philosophically important here is the search for a taxonomy and general theory of thinking. The question whether dumb creatures can think is apparently subsidiary. In this section, I shall suggest that this plausible view is mistaken. The question is important, because it is the site for a last ditch stand by those who maintain that there is a significant difference in kind between man and the rest of nature. Belief in an ontological gulf between humans and other natural beings is widely held to be as deeply mistaken as it was entrenched in a now discredited theistic world-view. Yet many feel uneasy about the alternative continuum assumption. Is there anything other than sentiment to back their view that, though man has some community with wider nature, human life is importantly distinct in kind? Suppose it is agreed that the Cartesian view of man's apartness from nature is to be rejected. Someone who still believes that man is distinct in kind may now try to reformulate his position in epistemological terms. Humans are different, he may suggest, not because they, and only they, have immaterial souls, but because only their behaviour ever requires that special form of 'rational' explanation in which phenomena are accounted for as the outcome of an agent's practical reasoning from his beliefs and intentions. On this view, we are marked off from the brutes because we, and not they, sometimes perform intentional actions-behaviour