Positivism Against Constructivism: A Network Game to Learn Epistemology

Abstract

Abstract. As mentioned in French secondary school official texts, teaching science implies teaching scientific process. This poses the problem of how to teach epistemology, as traditional science teaching is mostly dogmatic and based on contents. Previous studies show that pupils, science students and teachers mostly own positivist and realist spontaneous conceptions of science and scientific discovery. Here, we present the evaluation of the didactic impact of a network game, Eleusis+Nobel, on third year biology students who aim at becoming teachers. This cards game, based on a Popperian epistemology, has been designed to reproduce the scientific discovery process in a community. In the limits of our study, results obtained with classical social psychology tools indicate that students who played this game specifically assimilated the subjective dimension of knowledge and the role of the community in their conception of science, on the contrary to negative control students, who did not play.

Epistemological Beliefs and Philosophical Perspective of the Science and Mathematics Teachers about the Nature of Science

“…This finding is also reinforced by the opinion of science teachers as they were found as inductivist. This finding is in line with Hagège, Dartnell and Sallantin (2007) as they reported that previous research showed the students and Teachers to be positivists and realists. Significance difference was found regarding nature of science among science teachers on relativist-positivist continuum and instrumentalismrealism continuum.…”

Construction et validation préliminaire d’un outil francophone mesurant les conceptions épistémiques en lien avec les sciences

“…Un cas particulier concernerait un cursus entièrement dédié à l'épistémologie et la didactique des sciences : des étudiants suivant un tel cursus devraient avoir des conceptions plus sophistiquées que tout autre groupe d'étudiants (H2). Aussi, les conceptions initiales peuvent faire obstacle à l'apprentissage du concept visé ; il importe donc de les prendre explicitement en compte en provoquant des conflits cognitifs (Hagège et al, 2007). Nous supposons ainsi qu'un enseignement en épistémologie ou didactique des sciences, mis en oeuvre de manière constructiviste, devrait être plus efficace en termes de changement de conceptions qu'un enseignement magistral (H3).…”

“…Création et essai des items initiaux du QCES 9 L'élaboration du questionnaire a duré plusieurs années, des versions préliminaires ayant déjà été utilisées (Hagège et al, 2007). Les items ont été formulés au fur et à mesure d'interactions avec des étudiants en faculté des sciences (niveau licence), pour tenter de refléter leurs conceptions épistémiques initiales (pour les items naïfs), qui émergeaient lors de débats par exemple.…”

Human Discovery and Machine Learning

“…Since the compatibility of our protocol with human learning is also one of our main concerns, we studied the impact of Eleusis+Nobel on future biology teachers in order to validate epistemological and didactic aspects of this protocol. We now present this experimentation, published in (Hagège, Dartnell, & Sallantin, 2007).…”

“…(Dartnell & Sallantin, 2005) reflected on machine learning paradigms that we will further develop to situate our protocol. An experimentation of this protocol, in collaboration with researchers in epistemology and didactic, produced results were reported in (Hagège, Dartnell, & Sallantin, 2007) and will also be synthesized to validate the relevance of our platform to human learning. We will finally explore new directions in machine learning, ba-sed on cognitive aspects of the learner, to introduce time as a complexity measure and provide general heuristics to help eliminate conjectures during experimentation.…”