Investigações em Ensino de Ciências (Mar 2005)
Contributions of Laudan´s philosophy of science for understanding epistemological conceptions of high school students
Abstract
This work intents to rescue some contributions of Larry Laudan´s Philosophy of Science in order to understand epistemological conceptions helded by secondary students. The analysis was done retaking the results of previous works (Guridi, 1999; Salinas & Guridi, 2001) which studied some relationships between student´s epistemological views and conceptual comprehension in Newtonian Mechanics. Student´s epistemological conceptions appeared to be more rich and complex than those described in previous works. This result lead us to reflect upon possible factors that influence the development of views about Science and scientific knowledge and upon the ways in which the different components are combined to get such complex views of Science. We find in Larry Laudan´s Philosophy of Science a plausible theoretical framework which enable us to understand the nature of such process. We discuss these contributions in this work.
