Culturing conceptions: From first principles |
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| Authors: | Wolff-Michael Roth Yew Jin Lee SungWon Hwang |
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| Institution: | (1) University of Victoria, MacLaurin Building A548, Victoria, BC, Canada, V8W3N4;(2) National Institute of Education, Singapore, Singapore;(3) Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea |
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| Abstract: | Over the past three decades, science educators have accumulated a vast amount of information on conceptions––variously defined
as beliefs, ontologies, cognitive structures, mental models, or frameworks––that generally (at least initially) have been
derived from interviews about certain topics. During the same time period, cultural studies has emerged as a field in which
everyday social practices are interrogated with the objective to understand culture in all its complexity. Science educators
have however yet to ask themselves what it would mean to consider the possession of conceptions as well as conceptual change
from the perspective of cultural studies. The purpose of this article is thus to articulate in and through the analysis of
an interview about natural phenomenon the first principles of such a cultural approach to scientific conceptions. Our bottom-up
approach in fact leads us to develop the kind of analyses and theories that have become widespread in cultural studies. This
promises to generate less presupposing and more parsimonious explanations of this core issue within science education than
if conceptions are supposed to be structures inhabiting the human mind.
Wolff-Michael Roth
is the Lansdowne Professor of Applied Cognitive Science at the University of Victoria, Canada. His research focuses on cultural-historical,
linguistic, and embodied aspects of scientific and mathematical cognition and communication from elementary school to professional
practice, including, among others, studies of scientists, technicians, and environmentalists at their work sites. The work
is published in leading journals of linguistics, social studies of science, sociology, and fields and subfields of education
(curriculum, mathematics education, science education). His recent books include Toward an Anthropology of Science (Kluwer, 2003), Rethinking Scientific Literacy (Routledge, 2004, with A. C. Barton), Talking Science (Rowman and Littlefield, 2005), and Doing Qualitative Research: Praxis of Method (SensePublishers, 2005).
Yew Jin Lee
is an assistant professor of science education at the National Institute of Education, Singapore. He has completed his PhD
with Roth and begun to establish an extensive publication record, including Participation, Learning, and Identity: Dialectical Perspectives (Roth et al. 2005). His work concerned knowing and learning in complex systems, that is, at individual and collective (institution,
society) levels.
SungWon Hwang
is postdoctoral fellow at the University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada. She conducts interdisciplinary research projects
that articulate dialectic frameworks of learning and identity in the context of science and mathematics. She studied science
education in Korea and migrated to adopting a range of philosophical, psychological, and sociological theories for the conceptualization
of scientific practice from phenomenological and cultural perspectives. |
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| Keywords: | Activity Learning science Conversation analysis Conceptual change Praxis |
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