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“I have chosen another way of thinking”

Students’ Relations to Science with a Focus on Worldview

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Abstract

The article builds upon a study where students’ relations to science are related to their worldviews and the kind of worldviews they associate with science. The aim of the study is to deepen our knowledge of how worldview and students’ ways to handle conflicts between their own worldview and the worldview they associate with science, can add to our understanding of students’ relations to science. Data consists of students’ responses to a questionnaire (N = 47) and to interviews (N = 26). The study shows that for students who have a high ability in science, those who have taken science-intense programmes in upper secondary school to a higher extent than others have worldviews in accordance with the worldviews they associate with science. This indicates that students who embrace a worldview different from the one they associate with science tend to exclude themselves from science/technology programmes in Swedish upper secondary school. In the article the results are presented through case studies of single individuals. Those students’ reasoning is related to the results for the whole student group. Implications for science teaching and for further research are discussed.

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Notes

  1. Scientism can be defined in a number of different ways (see Stenmark 2001). The definition used here follows Poole (1998). He states that scientism but not science “Denies that anything other than the natural world exists”, states that “Scientific accounts are all there are”, “Denies that there are first causes or final causes”, and “Denies that there could ever be behavior other than law like (anti-miraculous)” (Poole 1998, p. 195). This definition of scientism is similar to what Stenmark (2001) calls “Ontological Scientism”.

  2. “Few conflicts” is defined as less than the 25% quartile—that is less than 5 conflicts.

  3. “Many conflicts” is defined as more than the 75%-quartile—that is more than 12 conflicts.

  4. With the “project of science” we mean the belief shared by researchers, that knowledge about the world is possible to gain and is worth the efforts. Also a belief in that knowledge is possible to gain through methodological reductionistic approaches.

  5. Translations from Swedish by the authors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Kristianstad University, 291 88, Kristianstad, Sweden

    Lena Hansson & Britt Lindahl

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  1. Lena Hansson
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  2. Britt Lindahl
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Correspondence to Lena Hansson.

Appendices

Appendix A

Table 1 Statements used in the questionnaire about Nonself (The universe). The figures show the order of the statements in the questionnaire
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Appendix B

Table 2 Statements used in the interviews about Nonself (The universe). The figures show the order of the statements in the interview
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Appendix C

Table 3 Camilla’s answers in questionnaire and card sorting activity during the interview (The order of statements in the interview (I) and questionnaire (Q) is indicated)
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Hansson, L., Lindahl, B. “I have chosen another way of thinking”. Sci & Educ 19, 895–918 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11191-010-9275-6

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