Separación de saturados, aromáticos y resinas (SAR)

The field of human development is huge and constantly evolving. Advances in genetics, therapeutics and imaging technologies stand us, for instance, at the cutting edge of cognitive neuroscience wherein new concepts, theories and methodologies are beginning to emerge and flourish.

Many fields in the social sciences, the natural sciences and in engineering and technology, besides addressing the prevention, treatment and cure of disease, for example, or how we might better understand the world, are more specifically trying to figure out how we might better understand ourselves.

Why we are the way we are – and why our children are the way they are – is the essence of the nature versus nurture debate.

As individuals, are we the way we are because it is our inherent nature to be so, that is, we were born this way, with intrinsic, inbuilt abilities and predispositions towards maths or science, for example? Or are some or all of our traits nurtured in us as a consequence, direct or indirect, of all our life experiences; any

predisposition toward maths being a consequence of our having being introduced to maths early on in our lives say, or having carers who loved science and talked

78 about it a lot, or having maths or science teachers that truly connected us to the subject?

Spencer et al. (2009) believe that modern theories of human development should put an end to the debate and "the nativist commitment to the idea of core

knowledge and endowments that exist without relevant postnatal experience continue to distract attention from the reality of developmental systems" (p. 79).

What Spencer et al. describe as developmental systems could be looked at in terms of reader response theory and the theory of interpretive communities – dependent, again, upon how one chooses to define texts and interpretive communities. They argue that

the developmental systems approach embraces the concept of epigenesis, that is, the view that development emerges via cascades of interactions across multiple levels of causation, from genes to environments. This view is rooted in a broader interpretation of experience and an appreciation for the nonobvious nature of development. (Spencer et al., 2009, p. 79)

The idea that cognitive growth is a result of cascades of interactions across myriad levels of causation fits well with the idea of a person living through what could be thought of as cascades – fluid iterations, say – of efferent and aesthetic

transactions within the isolated, concentric or overlapping environments that are a person's interpretive communities. The theories of reader response and

interpretive communities could so be seen to contribute, in this way, to Spencer et al.'s 'broader interpretation of experience' and their concept of the 'nonobvious' nature of cognitive development.

In direct response to Spencer et al.'s call for the rejection of the nativist-empiricist debate, however, Spelke and Kinzler (2009) argued that the nature-nurture debate was still very relevant. They felt that the dialogue (dialogue as opposed to debate) is in fact

entering a new and exciting phase, in which new methods of controlled rearing and of cognitive neuroscience, and new conceptual tools for understanding learning, allow exploration of how human concepts emerge through the interaction of innate cognitive structures shaped by natural

79 selection, with statistical learning processes shaped by specific encounters with the world. (Spelke & Kinzler, 2009, p. 96)

The statistical learning processes that they refer to are primarily those of language acquisition wherein an infant begins to recognise the regularities and patterns that exist in the language she or he hears. An infant so comes to determine the

relationships between specific syllables and will predict statistically – in as much as which relationships/patterns are more likely to occur than others – which syllables will form which individual words (Pelucchi, Hay, & Saffran, 2009; Saffran, 2003).

The concept of statistical learning is not limited to language acquisition though and encompasses any learning process wherein a person consciously or subconsciously perceives regularities, patterns or connections in the world and uses these

relationships to make sense of the same.

If one were to identify an encounter with the world as a text, an event, a

transaction, the 'living through' of which necessitates the employment of a child's interpretive strategies to make sense of the same, one might see, with respect to their exploration of how human cognitive and emotional concepts emerge, that the theories of reader response and interpretive communities offer similarities with a more generalised Spelke and Kinzler's statistical learning point of view, too.

The interpretive strategies that are the shape of reading, that call into being a text and its meaning, could be seen to echo learning strategies that come into play when a child has to shape an encounter with the world, and has to call that encounter and its meaning into being. Both types of strategies entail deconstruction of that which is known and, drawing on past experiences,

assimilation/reconstruction, re/creation, of the new experience in order to make new meaning.

However, whether or not cognitive development is brought about on account of the 'interaction' of statistical learning processes with 'innate cognitive structures' as Spelke and Kinzler's suggest, however, is still a matter for debate.

Spencer et al.'s affirmation of the rise developmental systems theory and Spelke and Kinzler's concept of an interaction between that which is innate and the consequential processes of learning, remain at odds with one another.

80 Parallels with this debate could be drawn between Piaget's and Vygotsky's theories of cognitive development. Though Piaget would not have called himself a nativist nor Vygotsky an empiricist, the juxtaposition is similar. Piaget's stage theory arguing that a child has to be innately (especially in the very beginning) psychologically mature enough to undertake or fully understand a specific

assignment, is at odds with Vygotsky's sociocultural development theory arguing that it is perpetual social interaction and language that urge a child along what will be a lifelong continuum of development (Vygotsky, 1986). Again the question is raised as to whether or not an individual's inclination toward science is innate or socially and culturally constructed.

Whether psychological development precedes learning or social learning precedes psychological development, Spelke & Kinzler believe that the dialogue, or perhaps the drive of the supporters of each side of the dialogue to prove each other wrong, seems to be fuelling modern advances in cognitive neuroscience. They say

the dialogue between nativism and empiricism is a rich source of insight into the nature and development of human knowledge ... [and] fosters new, interdisciplinary research that promises to increase dramatically

understanding of human knowledge. (Spelke & Kinzler, 2009, p. 96).

The continuing nativist-empiricist dialogue is not to be eschewed then – and in the spirit of interdisciplinary research, the theories of reader response and interpretive communities can be seen to fit well both with classic theories of cognitive

development and with the more modern theories arising on either side of the nativist-empiricist argument.

However, for this study, in thinking about how we make meaning, how we are and who we become – our fluid, changing selves being a consequence of all the texts we create/transact with and all our encounters with the world/how we are socially constructed – the philosophies of reader response and interpretive communities respects the concept of innatism and the ideas and developments of the nativist side of the debate, but favours the empiricist concept of developmental systems theory.

81

Conclusion

The theories of reader response and interpretive communities shape our ideas about how meaning is made. There is no 'generic reader' and there is no 'generic meaning'. A reader's encounter with a text, not only shapes the text itself in calling it into being, but that encounter, through iterative transactions using interpretive strategies particular to the reader's own interpretive communities, shapes unique meaning for the reader, too.

In looking to shape an intervention that might evoke in children more positive impressions of a life in science, the use of an aesthetic as opposed to efferent transactional stance in the shaping of meaning might have greater sway in that the aesthetic evokes richer and perhaps deeper engagement than the more

informational efferent stance.

As to whether an individual's inclination toward science is innate or learned, this research and the theoretical framework that underpins it favours the idea that an individual's environment – her or his sociocultural positioning in the world, the interpretive communities of which she or he is a part – have an enormous impact upon a person's cognitive and emotional development and upon one's 'being in the world'. Hence a disposition toward science, if any, is socially constructed/learned – or, from a reader response perspective particularly, is continually re/constructed and re/learned. That is, scientists are not born, they are re/made.

82

Chapter 4 – Methodology

Introduction

The important empirical/theoretical shift in research tradition in the field of science education that Jenkins' (2004) argues has seen, since the 1970s, "qualitative studies increasingly augmenting longer-established quantitative approaches" (p. 241), is fully embraced by this research as, although some quantitative

methodology, methods and findings are employed, these are few and serve only to augment the qualitative methodology, methods and findings.

What we think we know and how we do that thinking, shapes us. It defines our own sense of reality and what that reality means to us. What we think we know about other people, though, does not shape other people or define what other people think about their own sense of reality and what that reality means to them. That is, our own reasoning, even 'research' reasoning, cannot truly define another person's personal sense of being in the world; we can only allude to what we think it might be like, to be that other person; and we cannot measure or quantify another person's sense of self. When thinking about children, for instance, and how they might really feel about doing science or being a scientist in the world, we will always be in the wrong reality; ill-positioned, too far outside of any child's own sense of self to fully grasp what it might mean for that child to do science or be a scientist in the world – or what it might mean for that child to even have to think about such things.

Hence, where other people are participants in one's research – and especially, perhaps, when those people are children – it is important to acknowledge that the participants may have very different knowledge, very different ways of thinking and behaving, and very different views of the world both from one another and from oneself, and this knowledge and these ways of thinking and being are not readily or easily accessible. If they are accessible at all, they are far from quantifiable in any empirical or positivistic sense.

For this reason, any research seeking to explore what or how people think or how they see themselves and others, must be firmly grounded in congruent ontological and epistemological philosophies that stimulate, strengthen and support qualitative data collection and analysis.

83 This chapter first outlines that ontology and epistemology, and the congruence between the two. It describes, also, how these philosophies correlate with and fully integrate with the research's theoretical framework.

Evidence that children are not only aware of their own and others' ontological positions – or are, at least, able to allude to such positions – but are also able to reflect upon the same and articulate as much, is then presented and discussed.

In order that the children's thoughts and ideas are properly and respectfully considered within a robust research framework, the necessity for methodological coherence is examined and the commitment to qualitative rather than quantitative data collection and data analysis is explained.

I go on to present the argument for an interpretive thematic analysis of the data highlighting the importance of the use of a method of analysis that fits well with the research's theoretical framework and its ontological and epistemological foundation.

The suitability of thematic analysis in and of itself is presented; its theoretical independence, its flexibility and its inductive approach is discussed and is shown to fit particularly well with the investigative challenge that working within the

framework of reader response theory and the creation of multiple fluid meanings fosters.

The chapter concludes with an overview of how the research's methodological approach, coherence and choice of methods of data collection, analysis and interpretation present a robust conceptual framework wherein children's

engagement with fictions about science and scientists and children's thoughts and ideas about the same can be considerately and thoroughly explored in order to satisfy the research aims.