INFORMACIÓN GENERAL Denominación de la materia: Derecho de la Seguridad Social

In Chapter1, conception of the NOSI was defined as an individual’s ideas, beliefs, and assumptions and understanding about the scientific process; what scientists do and how scientific knowledge is developed and validated. When this broad definition is examined closely, it is apparent that there are such terms as ideas, beliefs, assumptions and understanding that require further explication. The assumptions made about the synonymity of the terms understanding, views, perceptions and conceptions are surprising. How can one disentangle from this confusion in the usage of the terms? Can these terms be taken to mean the same thing depending on context? Are understandings of NOSI the same as NOSI views, conceptions or perceptions? Even before an attempt is made to give answers to these questions, the “conceptual problem” at hand deepens when one examines the instruments that have been used to measure these constructs. A problem of demarcation to use Popper’s (1972) terminology arises.

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Schwartz, et al. (2012), Allchin (2011), Lyons, Slater, and Slater (2011), Dudu and Vhurumuku (2011; 2012), Vhurumuku (2011), Rubba and Andersen (1978) all refer to understandings of the NOSI. However, they do not distinguish understandings from conceptions about the NOSI. For example, in a paper on impact of scientific inquiry of a backwards-faded scaffolding approach to inquiry-based space science, Lyons, et al. (2011) uses the term understanding as having the same meaning with view of the NOSI and conceptions of the NOSI. Dudu and Vhurumuku (2012), in an article entitled, Teachers ’

Practices of Inquiry When Teaching Investigations: a Case Study, uses the terms

understandings of the NOSI and conceptions about the NOSI as meaning the same thing. In the same paper they mention perceptions of the NOSI and views of the NOSI in the same vein as conceptions of the NOSI. Using an adapted Schwartz, Lederman and Thompson’s (2001) VOSI instrument, Bartels, et al. (2012) measure what Schwartz et al. (2001) call views and coins it understandings of Knowledge of Inquiry (KOI). In her study, Lematla (2011) describes views about the NOSI as having the same meaning as understanding of the NOSI. The same study refers to conceptions about the NOSI as meaning the same as understandings of the NOSI. A study by Eastwood, Sadler, Sherwood and Schlegel (2012) on conceptions of scientific inquiry of students participating in an interdisciplinary study uses the phrase ‘understanding of scientific inquiry’ interchangeably with the phrase ‘conceptions of scientific inquiry’. Vhurumuku (2011), in an article entitled High School

Chemistry student’s scientific epistemologies and perceptions of the nature of laboratory inquiry gives the impression that views about the NOS and the NOSI are the same as

conceptions of the NOS and the NOSI. Carey, Evans, Honda, Jay and Unger (1989) have used the term conception of the NOS in the same way. Sampson and Grooms (2008) make some separation of students’ conceptions of the NOSI from students’ views about the NOSI. A closer examination however, shows that what is referred to, as conception and view are but different sides of the same coin.

The term perception of the NOS and NOSI has also been used (Bell, et al., 2003; Gess- Newsome & Lederman, 1995a; Khishfe & Abd-El-Khalick, 2002) to refer to the same phenomenon, as understanding of the NOS and NOSI. Beliefs and understandings have

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also been taken to mean the same thing in a research by Steel and Levy (2009). The study by Steel and Levy (2009) gives the impression that understandings and belief is one and the same thing. Of interest is that, while different terminology has been ascribed to the NOSI by these researchers, the instruments they have used to measure each of the constructs have more or less been the same. Most of the instruments are adaptations and/or adoptions of the Views of Scientific Inquiry (VOSI) and Views of Nature of Scientific Inquiry (VNOSI) instruments (Lederman, Abd-El-Khalick, Bell, & Schwartz, 2002; Lederman & O’Malley, 1990; Schwartz, et al., 2008). This appears to be the case irrespective of whether the research is quantitative or qualitative or both. A question is then asked: What then have the researchers been measuring or assessing; perceptions, beliefs or understandings, or views or conceptions? This question warrants literal examinations of these terms.

An analysis of the term usage with regard to the NOSI conceptions produces two categories of terms. The terms: view, understanding, perception and conception form the first category. They generally refer to mental processes or representations, ideas of entities and phenomenon. An entity or phenomenon in this study could refer to a construct of the nature of scientific inquiry, for example, use of imagination and creativity in scientific investigations. Minsky (2007) describes understanding as the ability to connect a representation to many other representations. Thus if an individual understands something in only one or two ways, it implies that the individual scarcely understand it at all. To Talsma (1997), understanding is being able to explain concepts in one’s own words, exemplify and use concepts in different contexts, make analogies, generalize laws or principles, integrate ideas and relationships between the ideas, give reasons for relationships and predict phenomena. A view of the NOSI can be taken to mean the same as perception, understanding or conception of the NOSI. According to Hofer and Pintrich (1997), beliefs are psychologically held understandings, premises or propositions about the world that are thought to be true. This supports Pajares (1992) whose assertion is that epistemic conceptions with affective characteristics are better described as beliefs. Hence in this study perceptions or conceptions of an entity, for example, the nature of scientific inquiry is taken as embedded within an ecological system which includes knowledge and

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beliefs. In his review of research on beliefs, Pajares (1992, p. 309) writes that beliefs have been associated with:

...attitudes, values, judgements, axioms, opinions, ideology, perceptions, conceptions, conceptual systems, implicit theories, practical principals, perspectives, repertories of understanding and social strategy...

In this study, beliefs are further taken to refer to feelings of certainty about what something means. This is closely related to the meanings of perception or conception. The term

knowledge falls into a different category of meaning. Chisholm (1977) defines knowledge

as justified true belief. Thus, knowledge can be tacit (meaning it is subjective and experiential and cannot be expressed in words, sentences, numbers, or formulas, i.e. context-specific) or explicit (meaning it is objective and rational and can be expressed in words, sentences, numbers, or formulas, i.e. context-free). In this study knowledge is taken as information and skills acquired through experience or education in social interaction; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject. In this case, the subject is the nature of scientific inquiry. Knowledge and conceptions are therefore different. What comes out to this point is that understanding and conception go together; belief does not require justification, whereas knowledge and understanding do.

For this study, conceptions of the nature of scientific inquiry refer to ideas, views, perceptions, and assumptions held by individuals about the scientific process as practiced by professional scientists’ not scientific inquiry as in school science. From their own experiences of school science inquiry, learners build conceptions about the NOSI as practiced by professional scientists. In sum, the stance taken by this thesis is that conceptions of the NOSI are taken to mean a person’s views or perceptions, understanding, preconceptions, dispositions and convictions of the scientific process.

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