Mc. Mariani et J. Ogborn, THE ONTOLOGY OF PHYSICAL EVENTS - A COMPARISON OF 2 GROUPS, International journal of science education, 17(5), 1995, pp. 643-661
The exploratory study concerns the way people understand the nature of
events. A questionnaire was given to groups of 14-16-year-old seconda
ry students and primary teachers in Britain. They were asked to classi
fy events as having or not having a number of ontological features. Th
e features were chosen systematically using a systemic network categor
izing features of events related to actions. A similar approach has pr
eviously been used for studying the understanding of entities in scien
ce. The result of the analysis in both cases is an 'ontological space'
in which entities or events, and their features, can be related to a
small number of interpretable dimensions. These dimensions can also be
understood in relation to fundamental categories of thought about rea
lity, following ideas from Piaget about the importance of actions in t
he construction of reality. The space obtained for events, the same fo
r both groups, is a four-dimensional space with dimensions: time-like
versus localized, action-like versus event-like, dynamic versus static
and internal causation versus external causation. These dimensions ar
e shown to be closely related to those previously found for entities.
Differences between the groups exist in the way they use the dimension
s in interpreting events.