| What is Science? What are people's ideas of the "Nature of Science"(NOS)? Academic community regards people's "Views of Nature of Science"(VNOS) as an important component of scientific literacy. It is far from enough merely memorizing some scientific knowledge or methods. None but thoroughly understanding scientific spirit, including its connotation and essence, its remarkable features that distinguish itself from other fields of knowledge such as literature and art, can equip us for today's scientific and democratic life and work, help us make better individual and social decisions, and engage more positively in the construction of future democratic society and modernization. Therefore,National Medium and Long-Term Education Reform and Development Planning Programs (2010-2020) has drawn up explicit objectives concerning improving civil scientific literacy.Science education community home and abroad have reached agreement on the significance of VNOS education; however, debates are still upsurging on the issues that what kinds of VNOS should be cultivated. What is more, Britain and America differs in this regard;science educators and professional scientists also hold different opinions.Regardless of those divergence, we cannot put off easily by a slight risk.Currently, surveys on students' and science teachers' VNOS are increasing, which have lay solid foundation for the government to make educational objectives of scientific literary. After combing all schools of thoughts, this research defined NOS in five dimensions, as "objectivity","evidence", "experiment-based mentality","scientific process","scientific communication".According to international surveys on cross-culture VNOS, Chinese science teachers and students manifested numerous fantastic and inexplainable contradictions. For example, there were lots of odd perspectives they expressed in open-ended questionaries and interviews that could not be categorized into the above mentioned five dimensions defined by western scholars. What is more, their scores were far lower than what they got in standardized questionnaires tests composed of multiple-choice questions and true-false items. Though these phenomena also occurred in American interviewees, the numbers were much less and their interview scores were commonly higher than questionnaire ones.Other researches also discovered that Chinese science teachers got higher scores than American teachers on harder questions such as post-modernism conceptions; but less scores on somehow easier ones such as classic science conceptions.Furthermore, domestic research and practice indicated what Chinese science teachers and students' VNOS are, i.e. they focused on scientific knowledge rather than scientific methods; post-modern VNOS exerted negative effects on science education under Chinese cultural context.Generally speaking, scientific literacy education has not achieved much effects.These foundings told us that scientific literacy of Chinese science teachers and students were unique in some ways. Recent years lots of research results on thinking patterns between Chinese and westerners in cognitive psychology field also demonstrated this point, which means,studying Chinese science teachers and students' VNOS as well as their affecting factors cannot ignore habitual Chinese ways of thinking :"Doctrines of the Mean".Secondly, in the perspective of research methodology, it is particularly difficult to use questionnaires in getting valid assessment on students' VNOS, for one thing when Asian people fill in questionnaires,they will be inevitably affected by the doctrines of the mean and the complex of social expectation; for the other, when assessing complicated conceptions, their definitions cannot reach universal agreement, and thus"ambiguities" arise. Assessments on VNOS have both two shortcomings.Therefore, this research integrated qualitative and quantitive methods.Quantitive methods like questionnaire surveys could further demonstrate previous discoveries and the relationship between VNOS and Chinese ways of thinking (represented by the doctrines of the mean); qualitative methods like interviews could continue insightful exploration on Chinese science teachers and students' true VNOS based on questionnaire results.Therefore, questionnaire questions and interview themes in this research were designed on the basis of the definitions of VNOS. Furthermore, this research prepared nine interdependent and progressive interview topics around those themes and in compatible with Chinese cultural contexts.The evaluation standards of interview contents focused on whether interviewees defended themselves by "scientific" ways through which we could further assess their VNOS, rather than whether they could recite lots of NOS knowledge. Research subjects were thirty junior and senior science students in normal universities, who would be future science teachers and assumed to have higher scientific literacy than other college students.Researches results indicated that compared with classic VNOS,Chinese, VNOS of normal university science students differed in seven dimensions of "objectivity of science","evidence","experimental mentality","scientific process","effects of communication in scientific research","effects of cooperation and competition" and "superstition identification".First, the conceptions of the objectivity of science, this research found that 93.3% interviewees held two or more wrong conceptions at the same time, including unclarity of idealism and materialism, dialectic views of knowledge objectivity, "changing" views of truth and ambiguous scientific objectivity. Second, conceptions toward evidence.100% interviewees adopted empirical views of evidence to distinguish science and pseudo-science, considering science as "usefulness","fantasy","personal experience" and "existence". 43% interviewees held the views of authoritative evidence, i.e. They preferred to quote dominant theories to prove their points. Only one interviewee could partly intend to use experiment-based evidence. Most of the interviewees had two such troubling thoughts within their minds. Third, conceptions towards experimental mentality. 93.3% and 76.7% interviewees respectively had practical mentality and ambiguous experimental conceptions but lack of experimental control conceptions; a handful of interviewees could realize their faults gradually by researchers' frequent arguing and questioning. Fourth, conceptions towards scientific process and scientific methods. 96.7% interviewees identified scientific and pseudo-scientific processes by their final results or achievements, rather than differences and conflicts between science and pseudo-science cases offered by researchers. Meanwhile, this research also discovered that some interviewees held vain and passive attitudes toward scientific research. Fifth, conceptions towards "communication in scientific research". Only 30% and 36.7% interviewees respectively realized the importance of "pursuing universal knowledge" and "accumulating scientific knowledge". Moreover, these interviewees still held other conceptions contradictory to those views above mentioned. Sixth,conceptions towards "cooperation and competition". Most interviewees held the views of "regular and mutual benefits orientated" cooperation and "utilitarian functions orientated" competition. Seventh, identifications toward superstition and science. 30% and 70% interviewees were visible and invisible superstitionists respectively, and none is scientific atheists.(see appendix).Based on above research findings, we could get some clues that those interviewees mainly depended on traditional way of thinking to understand and view the seven interview themes of NOS above mentioned and moreover, they held numerous contradictory conceptions toward the same themes. These views and conceptions reflected that Chinese science students in normal universities adopted a unique way to explain NOS, quite different from western cultural perspectives. This way of thinking leads to the inaccuracy of western VNOS questionnaires when applied to Chinese people. Though the scientific knowledge the interviewees have already possessed could help them deal with some questions in the questionnaires, the results only showed that they have"knowledge". There were still lots of subjective imaginations,personal experiences, contradictory and ambiguous conceptions in their minds,which reflected that the interviewees were short of scientific way of thinking and believes.These discoveries also implied that unclarity between subjectivity and objectivity, integration between human and knowledge, and flashing believes, had tremendous effects on normal university science students when they were developing informed conceptions, such as "objectivity","evidence", "experimental mentality". There was a cultural transformation when they tried to establish cognitive system of NOS.Through "Self'(or "Personalization) this converter, they transformed scientific conceptions into "self-imagination","authority and experience","practice","effects","harmony and reciprocity" and ones that are compatible with Chinese cultural context. Moreover, these views were in accordance with conceptualized features of "the doctrines of the mean",such as the philosophies that "nature and man in one","conversion of Yin and Yang","making sense","paying attention to the consequences","treating people only according to their social positions","waiting for the cat to jump","'harmony in diversity". Therefore, within Chinese cultural context, many students' understanding towards NOS was different from westerners'. Obviously, the discoveries of this research could not judge the superiority of either culture. In fact, the integration of human-beings and knowledge in Chinese culture, only subjectivity without objectivity beyond self, as well as finding common ground with others are of vital importance in preventing science from unlimited expansion and environmental pollution.Based on above discoveries, this research proposed the following suggestions. The teaching objectives of China styled NOS should put first priority the students' understanding of "objects" and "objectivity".Therefore, when students deal with the real world rather than personal relationship, they can convert their habitual way of thinking like"subjectiveness" and "personal heart" into "objectiveness" and"objectivity",walking out of austere and primitive thought of "Nature and Man in One". Only when they did this, could they then achieve real understanding of scientific experimental mentality, scientific demonstration, scientific accumulation and universality, and possess mature and penetrating conception towards complicated philosophy of"Nature and Man in On"'. Otherwise, even though the teachers provide lots of "scaffolds" like conducting scientific experiments and giving students opportunities to participate scientific researches, students can hardly know what science really is. |
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