Epistemological and educational issues in teaching practice-oriented scientific research: roles for philosophers of science

Abstract

The complex societal challenges of the twenty-first Century require scientific researchers and academically educated professionals capable of conducting scientific research in complex problem contexts. Our central claim is that educational approaches inspired by a traditional empiricist epistemology insufficiently foster the required deep conceptual understanding and higher-order thinking skills necessary for epistemic tasks in scientific research. Conversely, we argue that constructivist epistemologies (developed in the philosophy of science in practice) provide better guidance to educational approaches to promote research skills. We also argue that teachers adopting a constructivist learning theory do not necessarily embrace a constructivist epistemology. On the contrary, in educational practice, novel educational approaches that adopt constructivist learning theories (e.g., project-based learning, PjBL) often maintain traditional empiricist epistemologies. Philosophers of science can help develop educational designs focused on learning to conduct scientific research, combining constructivist learning theory with constructivist epistemology. We illustrate this by an example from a bachelor’s program in Biomedical Engineering, where we introduce conceptual models and modeling as an alternative to the traditional focus on hypothesis testing in conducting scientific research. This educational approach includes the so-called B&K method for (re-)constructing scientific models to scaffold teaching and learning conceptual modeling.

Philosophical-Translation Approach in Corpus-Applied Translation Studies: Phenomenon of the Official-Business Style Texts

“…It is implied that the philosophical principle of epistemological constructivism is simultaneously the process and the result of choosing transformational strategies 10 . Comprehensive understanding of specialized lexicon is not possible without an integrated approach, which facilitates understanding by what means translators construct each act and new meaning of the encoded word combination in the source text and in choosing the appropriate equivalent, localizing the grammatical structure in the target text.…”

Teaching philosophy of science that matters

“…Only a few other European countries have similar national requirements, but sometimes there are university-level requirements regarding philosophy of science education. For example, Kleinhans (2021) points out that Utrecht University (in the Netherlands) has a course requirement for philosophy of science-related teaching for science students, and MacLeod (2021) and Boon et al (2022) offer reflections on the compulsory courses in philosophy of science for engineering students at the University of Twente (also in the Netherlands). Lusk (2022) provides a perspective from a residential college of Michigan State University in the U.S., where students can fulfill some of their course distribution requirements by taking a sequence of four HPS courses.…”

“…Apart from contributions that reflect on innovative pedagogical tools and approaches to improve philosophy of science education, the collection also includes two papers that reflect on influences going in the opposite direction, from philosophy of science to pedagogy/didactics. Boon et al (2022) and Reydon (2021) show that contemporary philosophy of science has produced insights that are relevant for the theory and practice of science education. Boon et al (2022) discuss how problem-and project-based learning approaches can profit from philosophical reflection on the role of facilitators in group discussions.…”

Insights from coherence in students’ scientific reasoning skills

“…Scientific reasoning refers to the ability of students to construct new knowledge and learn science through observation, evaluation, interpretation, and theoretical explanation [ 2 ]. Scientific reasoning is discussed in the next section.…”