Conceptualizations of nature: An interpretive study of 16 ninth graders' everyday thinking

The research reported in this article sought to provide a broader understan ding of high school science students as persons by describing the personal thoughts, or everyday thinking, about a question relevant to science: What is Nature? The purpose was to gain an understanding of students' fundamenta l beliefs about the world on the basis that developing scientific literacy can be successful only to the extent that science finds a niche in the cogn itive and cultural milieu of students. The theoretical background for this research came from cultural anthropology and the methodology was interpreti ve, involving student interviews. The assertions of the study in summary fo rm were: (a) The ninth-grade students in the study tended to discuss Nature using several different perspectives (e.g., religious, aesthetic, scientif ic, conservationist). A rich breadth of perspectives typically characterize d any one student's discussion of Nature. (b) After 9 years of schooling, h owever, the level of science integration within everyday thinking remained low for many of these ninth graders. In their discussions of Nature, most v olunteered little school knowledge of science. They were aware of school sc ience topics such as the ozone layer, rain forests, and the Big Bang theory . Such topics were voluntarily mentioned but usually without elaboration ev en when asked. (c) Science grade success was not correlated with the concep ts these ninth graders typically chose to use in a discussion about the nat ural world. The students with the most grade success in science had not nec essarily grasped fundamental concepts about Nature and science. (d) Regardl ess of school grade success, including school science grade success, most o f the ninth graders attached considerable importance to personal experience s with Nature. Their environmental inclinations were strong. The article en ds with a discussion of the implications. (C) 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.