Tackling secondary school students' misconceptions about science through philosophical dialogue: an empirical study.

How can secondary school students learn to reflect about science? A widening gap between scientific consensus and public opinion on topics such as climate change, vaccine safety or evolution, makes this question ever so relevant. Misconceptions about science contribute to the skepticism towards scientific knowledge and the rise of fake news. Science education can play a key role to turn the tide. The question is which classroom approach is effective. This PhD-project focuses on what the effect may be of allowing students to participate in dialogues about science. Because learning science is more than grasping scientific ideas such as evolution or the molecular structure of a virus. It also entails learning about the building processes of scientific knowledge. This knowledge about science is known as 'Nature of science' (NOS). A dialogue-based approach is poorly implemented or studied in NOS education. In particular, a dialogue technique from the field of humanities seems an interesting instrument to stimulate reflection about NOS in this context: the philosophical dialogue. This teaching method helps students reflect about big questions and clarify the meaning of concepts. The aim of this PhD project is to investigate and evaluate the effect of the implementation of philosophical dialogues on the NOS understanding of third grade secondary school students. First, the current didactic practices with regard to NOS in secondary science education are charted through a document study and teacher interviews. Then, a systematic literature review allows categorizing and analyzing current approaches towards NOS education. These steps will allow formulating the conditions for implementing dialogue-based NOS education in the scienceclass. Lastly, a quasi-experimental intervention study will allow introducing the philosophical dialogues about NOS in secondary school classes. This explorative study will allow measuring the effect of the intervention on the NOS understanding of students. Thus, the study increases our understanding of the impact of dialogue-based NOS-education. This longitudinal study is unique in its combination of two different didactic paradigms in the field of humanities and science didactics. The study allows studying and evaluating a new didactic approach and sharing the findings in the research community. In turn, the study can contribute to empower students in recognizing and debunking fake news about science.

Keywords:SCIENCE EDUCATION, NATURE OF SCIENCE, EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH, DIALOGUE

Disciplines:Science, technology and engineering curriculum and pedagogics, Secondary education, Didactics of school subjects