Browse Theses

A weakness inherent in science education has been, and continues to be, its emphasis principally on the teaching of scientific knowledge, i.e. knowledge of the object (or the observed). Little attention has been directed to the teaching of people knowledge about scientists, i.e. knowledge of the subject (or the observer), who generates scientific knowledge. This study explored the possible effects of people knowledge on science learning. Participants in the study were 323 tenth graders from nine classes in a public school in Taipei, Taiwan. They were randomly assigned to three groups to self-study science in a computer-based learning environment. The control group was instructed to study various scientific laws discovered by three scientists in three science lessons. The other two groups were instructed to study the same science lessons after studying one of two kinds of people knowledge about the three scientists: achievement-oriented people knowledge (APK) and process-oriented people knowledge (PPK). APK profiles scientists' scientific achievements, and PPK describes scientists' struggles before making the scientific discoveries. The main findings were: Firstly, it was found from problem-solving tests that all three groups performed equally well in applying what they learned from the lessons to solve textbook problems. However, in applying what they learned to interpret the relationships between scientific laws, only the PPK group performed better. Secondly, regarding learning interest, among the students who showed high personal interest in science, the APK group tended to consider the lessons as less interesting than the control group. Among the students who demonstrated low personal interest in science, the PPK group tended to consider the science lessons as more interesting than the control group. Thirdly, in describing their image of the three scientists, the APK group tended to emphasize the abilities and successes of the scientists, whereas the PPK group tended to focus on the efforts, trials and errors these scientists made to make discoveries possible. Taken together, the findings indicated that PPK was fundamentally more important than APK for science learning as assessed in this study. Implications of these findings regarding the design of computer-based learning environments will be discussed.