Document Type
Article
Version
preprint
Publication Date
1992
Abstract
What do students believe about the world around them? Hawkins (1983) suggested that young students can have a difficult time understanding heliocentrism because their personal experience is literally geocentric. What this illustrates is that meaningful learning in the science classroom presupposes students who enter with beliefs about the world compatible with science as it is taught in the classroom. The study of student beliefs (or for that matter, teacher beliefs) at fundamental levels is the study of worldview (Cobern, 1991a). The research reported here was an interpretive study of beliefs about nature, a delimitation of worldview, held by women college students preparing for careers in nursing, a science-based, helping profession.
WMU ScholarWorks Citation
Cobern, William W., "Chaos and Order, Mystery and Knowledge, the Beautiful and Mundane: College Student Conceptualizations of Nature" (1992). Scientific Literacy and Cultural Studies Project. 30.
https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/science_slcsp/30
Published Citation
Cobern, W. W. (1993). College students' conceptualizations of nature: An interpretive worldview analysis. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 30(8), 935-951.
Comments
SLCSP Paper # 103