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Social representations about science among students
Špela Šoštarič
Full text (pdf) | Views: 12 | Written in Slovene. | Published: September 18, 2003
Abstract: The article presents the results of a comparative study on social representations about science among students of social and natural sciences. My interest was focused mainly on the scientific metaparadigms we can find behind these representations, especially positivism and constructivism. The basic epistemological difference between the two is in accepting or rejecting the possibility of acquiring objective knowledge about reality. In the first part of the research I used my own questionnaire about social representations about science and scientific knowledge. In the second part the interviews were performed with students who had obtained extreme scores on the questionnaire – in any of the two directions. The results of the questionnaire indicated that the students of natural sciences hold more positivistic representations and the students of social sciences more constructivistic ones. In the interviews these differences disappeared. Surprising resemblances were evident especially at the ontological and epistemological levels. I try to examine these results from the viewpoint of Tajfel's social identity theory and Bečaj's understanding of the structural model of the enviroment.
Keywords: positivism (philosophy), constructivism, social representations, students, science
