"IT'S JUST A THEORY": DEVELOPING AN UNDERSTANDING OF THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A COMMON ENGLISH USE OF THEORY AND A SCIENTIFIC THEORY, USING MT. RAINIER

This study emerges from the need to address the occasional adult student disclaimer regarding the theory of evolution, “It’s just a theory.” In-service secondary school science and preservice elementary teachers hold limited conceptions and misconceptions of a scientific theory. Development of their understanding of the difference between the common use of theory and a scientific theory was studied with matched pre, intermediate and post instruction open-ended assessments.

The study’s two research questions were: 1) What do post baccalaureate students understand as the difference between the common use of theory as a guess and scientific theory as a description of the natural world based on a preponderance of scientific evidence with explanatory power? 2) How is understanding of a scientific theory affected using an instructional strategy with a 500-piece puzzle of an unidentified natural phenomena? In this case the puzzle was of Mt Rainier.

The puzzle was used in undergraduate geology courses and post-baccalaureate science pedagogy courses as a model of scientific theory development; each piece representing unrelated scientific evidence. The data in this study were derived from five science pedagogy courses at California State University, San Bernardino. Students were given an open-ended pre assessment on their understanding of a scientific theory followed by opportunities to work on the puzzle with the goal of developing a scientific theory, “the big picture about the natural world that these data pieces can make as they relate to each other.” Students were given intermediary open-ended assessments and a post assessment.

There was an N of 38 matched pre and post assessments and 13 matched pre, intermediate, and post assessments for the elementary teachers. There was an N of 13 matched pre and post assessments for the secondary science teachers with 9 matched pre, intermediate and post assessments.

An analysis was done of patterns of 1) concepts expressed in relation to a multi-text analysis of what constitutes a scientific theory, 2) changes in responses, pre and post instruction, 3) patterns of developing understanding during the theory (puzzle) development, and 4) observations and recommendations regarding using an unidentified puzzle as a learning experience to develop understanding of scientific theories.