IDENTIFYING AND ANALYZING UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS' METAPHORS ABOUT SCIENCE KNOWLEDGE AND PROCESS

This research took place during multiple iterations of an introductory geology service course with a student population of about 300 students per offering. Students answered two open-ended questions prior to the course and then again post-course. The questions probed the students’ understanding of the nature of scientific knowledge and the scientific process. The researcher (also the instructor) used phenomenography as the theoretical/analytical framework to discern the aggregate understanding of the entire group of respondents. Based on this analysis, students understood science was something that they were doing if they were wearing scientific clothing (goggles, lab coat), or working with scientific equipment (microscopes or test tubes), or doing routine activities (titrations, dissections, following directions). The implication here is that the students perceived scientists as technicians as opposed to problem solvers or knowledge creators, and they objectify scientific knowledge. It is not something that scientists create, but something that already exists, and the activities of the scientists are to verify or falsify that knowledge. A second analysis of the data used conceptual metaphor theory (CMT), where the researcher categorized metaphor-related words in the responses into themes. Some of the identified primary metaphors include SCIENTIFIC KNOLWEDGE IS A LANDSCAPE, and IDEAS ARE OBJECTS usually pieces of a larger whole. Noteworthy here is how the results using the CMT framework compliment the results of the previous analysis. Students considered ideas as objects that could be “dug for,” “discovered,” and “brought up.” In this perception, there is no reference to knowledge construction, only verification, something that befits the scientist as technician persona noted previously. Importantly, a standard lecture approach to teaching science only reinforces such perceptions. Students need to have and reflect on the knowledge creation that is a true part of the scientific process and their own learning.