The Collective Production of High School Students’ “Images of Science”

In the science education research literature, it often appears to be assumed that students “possess” more or less stable “images of science” that directly correspond to their experiences with scientific practice in science curricula. From cultural-historical and sociocultural perspectives, this assumption is problematic because scientific practices are collective human activities and are therefore neither identical with students’ experiences nor with accounts of these experiences that students make available to researchers. Drawing on data collected before, during, and after pre-university biology students’ internships in a scientific laboratory we show how students’ “images of science” are co-produced along a trajectory of translations that was determined by the use of particular actions and tools, and a particular division of labor in scientific practice. Introduction Coming to understand science involves gaining insights into a number of facets of science. There is knowledge of the contents and methods of science—that is, the laws, models, theories, concepts, ideas, experimental techniques, and procedures used by scientists. Such knowledge in science forms the basis of undergraduate science curricula. There is also knowledge about how scientists develop and use scientific knowledge: how they decide which questions to investigate, how they collect and interpret scientific data, and how they decide whether to believe findings published in research journals. This is knowledge about the nature of science. Here, we report students’ views about the nature of science; their images of science. (Ryder, Leach & Driver, 1999, p. 201, last emphasis added) Students’ “images of science” have been monitored for more than a half a century now. The first studies were based on written tests administered on a large scale; in these tests, students were asked to write an essay in response to the somewhat loose question: what do you “think of scientist and science” (Mead & Metraux, 1957, p. 384). More recent studies have drawn on semi-structured interviews that specifically addressed issues concerning the nature of scientific inquiry (e.g., Ryder et al., 1999). Whatever the kind of method, studies in this research field conducted so far draw upon the assumption that students “possess” more or less stable “images of science” that can be elicited and captured in some form; these images are thought to directly correspond to their experiences with scientific practice in school or out-of-school science experiences. It recently has been found that students—when responding to questionnaires used to monitor their “images of science”—draw upon “different epistemological representations in different contexts” (Leach, Millar, Ryder & Séré, 2000, p. 497). More so, other empirical and theoretical work suggests that any elicitation of knowledge bears the mark of the context of elicitation; that is, the forms and contents of knowledge that individuals make available to each other depends on the situation and therefore is highly contingent (Roth & Lee, 2007). This implies a less stable and individual nature of students’ “images of science” and, consequently, a looser correspondence with students’ experiences with scientific practice in science curricula. Scientific practices are therefore translated to (rather than correspond to) students’ “images of science”; and this translation, in its very nature, produces differences so that the original and the new no longer are the same. The purpose of this study is to answer the method-related question about how students’ “images of science” are produced. Theoretical framework We conceptualized the practices and pathways supposedly leading to (intended) “images of science” as reported in the literature (see Figure 1). Broadly speaking, the pathway towards students’ “images of science” as reported in the research literature follows the pathway 0 → 1 → 2 → 3 and overlaps with the curriculum pathway 0 → 1 that intends to lead to students’ “images of science.” To better understand the processes of “imagification” on the pathway between scientific practice and students’ “images of science” we use cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) as an analytic tool. Culturalhistorical activity theory is rooted in the work of soviet psychologists who maintained that human action cannot be understood outside actual praxis, which is conceived in terms of object-oriented and artifact-mediated activity (Vygotsky, 1978). Cultural-historical activity theory is concerned with understanding real, concrete activity in the very settings where it occurs, based on the grounds individual and collective human agents have for doing what they do (Roth & Lee, 2007). Activity theory therefore aspires to understand and explain each form of action in its concrete material detail (artifacts, objects), whatever the situation. It allows us to analyze in detail practices conceptualized in Figure 1 and how “images of science” arise there from. Figure 1. Distinguished practices and pathways supposedly leading to (intended) “images of science” according to the literature. Practices with research subjects directly involved (taping, interviewing, using questionnaires) Practices in which students are supposed to construct images of science (enacted curriculum) Practices without research subjects directly involved (data processing and analysis, writing) Reported “images of science” In te nd ed c or re sp on de nc e