大學生科學本質觀之評析

Abstract

本研究旨在利用科學本質問卷研究不同學院的大學生經過九年一貫國民義務教育以及高中科學課程後，其科學本質觀在七大面向的表現，包含「經驗性」、「暫時性」、「理論負載性」、「創造性」、「社會文化影響」、「推論性」以及「科學理論與科學定律的關係」。本研究工具是由Lederman、Abd-El-Khalick、Bell與Schwartz (2002) 所設計的VNOS-C量表的中譯版本 (Liu& Lederman，2007) 共八題開放式問卷。透過分析歸納法（analytic induction）將75位修習科學本質課程大學生的作答，利用科學本質觀點分類表進行編碼，將其作答歸類成三種想法：樸質型想法（naïve）、過渡型想法（transitional）以及知識型想法（informed）。而後分析不同的學院間的差異，並進一步與他國（中國、加拿大、美國）相關研究相比較。研究結果歸納如下：

一、超過一半的受試者「經驗性」、「理論負載性」與「科學理論與科學定律的關係」三面向呈現質樸型想法。 二、課綱中著重的面向與受試者的科學本質觀層次無明顯相關，反而課綱著重的「經驗性」面向，受試者呈現較高比例的樸質型觀點。 三、理學院在「經驗性」面向上明顯優於工程學院；文學院在「暫時性」與「社會文化影響」面向上知識型觀點的比例高於其它學院；教育學院在「推論性」面向上過渡型與知識型觀點的比例高於其它學院。 四、「科學理論與科學定律的關係」為各國整體大學生中知識型觀點比例最低的面向；並且我國理學院學生在「社會文化影響」面向得分較高，反之「理論負載性」面向得分較低。

綜合以上結果，分別對科學本質觀分類表及未來研究者提出相關建議。

This study mainly uses an open-ended questionnaire to assess the views of nature of science (NOS) of undergraduate students, who have finished Grade 1-9 science curriculum and high school science education. The main purpose of this research is to examine the differences in understanding the seven aspects of NOS of these students among different colleges. The aspects of NOS are: “empirically based,” “tentative,” “theory-ladenness,” “involved human creativity and imagination”, “socially and culturally embedded”, “distinction between observation and inference,” and “function of, and relationship between scientific theories and laws.” The research instrument containing eight open-ended questions called “Views of Nature of Science (VNOS-C)”was originally designed by Lederman, Abd-El-Khalick, Bell and Schwartz (2002) and has been translated into the Chinese version for studying in Taiwan (Liu& Lederman, 2007). Further this study adopts the analytic induction method to analyze questionnaire responses from 75 undergraduate students who took a general education course. A coding scheme is then created. Three levels are categorized to present students’ understandings on the seven NOS aspects: naïve, transitional, and informed. The follow-up comparisons are to search the differences between different colleges, and contrasts with related investigations in other countries (including China,Canada, the United States). The results of this study are summarized as follows:1. Under the three NOS aspects of “empirically based,” “subjective,” and “function of, and relationship between scientific theories and laws”, more than half of the students hold naïve views. 2. There is no significant correlation between all categories in “Grade 1-9 Curriculum Guidelines” and the students’ views of NOS. On the contrary, the subjects presented a higher percentage of naïve views of NOS at the “empirically based” aspect that the curriculum guidelines focus on. 3. The students inCollege of Science perform significantly better than those in the College of Engineering in the aspect of “empirically based”. The proportion of informed views of nature of science in the “tentative” and “socially and culturally embedded” of the College of Arts is higher than other colleges. Students in the College of Education has higher proportion of informed or transitional views in the “Distinction between observation and inference” NOS aspect than students in other colleges.4. “Function of, and relationship between scientific theories and laws” is the aspect with the lowest proportion of informed views among the overall college students in the four countries. The students of the College of Science in Taiwan get higher scores in the “socially and culturally embedded” aspect, while the “theory-ladenness” aspect scores lower.Combining the above results, this study puts forward some suggestions to the codebook of NOS views and future researchers who are involved in the research topics of NOS.