Materials Evaluatio
Z. Ojagh; F. Ahmadi; M. Hedayati
Abstract
Background and Objectives: Making developmental changes in a society requires systematic modifications. Education is a powerful driving force behind it. Due to the limitation of budget and space in most Iranian schools and time-consuming nature of fundamental changes in teaching methods, the capacity ...
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Background and Objectives: Making developmental changes in a society requires systematic modifications. Education is a powerful driving force behind it. Due to the limitation of budget and space in most Iranian schools and time-consuming nature of fundamental changes in teaching methods, the capacity of non-formal education should be considered to compensate for these shortcomings in order to achieve the educational goals of students. Museums and science centers are part of these opportunities. Iranian Museum of Science and Technology (INMOST) was established as an institution in the science and innovation system of the country and can play an important role in non-formal education by adopting different methods in representing science, and by communicating science and society, it can nurture and promote the students’ understanding of the nature of science along with the institution of formal education. To understand how this function is performed, the relationship between science museums and the concepts of science and science education must be studied from different perspectives. Due to the novelty of scientific studies in this field, the present study analyzes INMOST from the perspective of the nature of science and how it represents by museum exhibits. In this regard, the purpose of this research is to understand the status of representation of the nature of science in the Mechanics Gallery of the INMOST to clarify how educational visits to this museum help formal education.Methods: For this purpose, the concept of "nature of science" is described and the classification of Chiappetta, Fillman and Sethna (1991) is used as a conceptual framework. In this classification, the nature of science includes four categories: Science as a body of knowledge, Science as investigative nature of science, Science as a way of thinking, Science as interaction of science, technology and society. To understand the presence of features of the nature of science in museum exhibitions, deductive qualitative content analysis is conducted so, the statistical sample of the research are (1) all the labels explaining the displays and objects that are in the Mechanics Gallery of the National Museum of Science and Technology and (2) all the oral explanations of the museum guides to the visitors which were collected and analyzed. Therefore, purposive sampling was utilized.Findings: Analysis of the content of 14 devices in the Mechanics Gallery of the INMOST shows that each device has some components and lacks some other components, and there are fewer devices in this gallery that have all four components of the nature of science. This also is true for the descriptions of the guides. Comparison of the data shows that both in the description of the guide and in the labels, the level of attention to the dimension of "interaction of science with society and technology" is less than other dimensions. The highest extent of attention is paid to “Science as a research method” and “Science as a set of knowledge” in the labels and the guides’ descriptions, respectively.Conclusion: Science museums as a non-formal education institution can play a vital role in increasing scientific literacy, scientific understanding and improving the process of non-formal science education in society and contributing to the formal education. The INMOST can meet this expectation when museum exhibits, labels, and oral explanations are represented, designed and compiled based on communication principles, museum exhibits, and informal design instruction.
Educational Technology
N. Basiri; F. Ahmadi; M. Neek-Amal
Abstract
Background and Objective: Today, a positivist one-dimensional view of science, where it considers scientific propositions to be objective, definite, and fixed, is not credible enough, and the interdisciplinary and multidimensional nature of science is considered. Science is a human endeavor to explain ...
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Background and Objective: Today, a positivist one-dimensional view of science, where it considers scientific propositions to be objective, definite, and fixed, is not credible enough, and the interdisciplinary and multidimensional nature of science is considered. Science is a human endeavor to explain natural phenomena that require interdisciplinary knowledge. The product of this effort, in which people from all cultures and branches of science participate, is scientific knowledge. This knowledge is based on empirical evidence, rational reasoning, and skepticism; and while it is enduring, it is transient and temporary. Over the past century, the debate over the definition of science and how science works has given rise to the realm of the "nature of science." The nature of science is a common issue in the philosophy, history, sociology, and psychology of science that addresses questions such as science and how it works. Scientists respond to how society functions as a group and how society and science interact. In this field, various components such as observation and inference, transience and temporality, imagination and creativity, society and culture, laws and theories in science and multiple scientific methods are studied, which are referred to as "components of the nature of science". In this article, with a descriptive-survey design and with a quantitative approach of science students, "students' understanding of science and scientific exploration" was assessed. Methods: The population consisting of second and third year undergraduate physics students of Tehran and Isfahan universities was considered. A statistical sample consisting of 4 classes from two universities was available. A questionnaire for students' understanding of science and scientific exploration was provided to students. Data were analyzed by one-sample t-test and correlation coefficient. Findings: The results showed that the assessed students have an incomplete understanding of the components of the nature of science. There is a significant positive correlation between physics students' understanding of the concept of mass and their views on the nature of science. In order to provide up-to-date solutions to increase students' familiarity with the nature of science, elements of 21st century super-technology - the Internet - for learning science and understanding the nature of science were introduced. It was shown that observation and inference, fantasy and creativity, society and culture, laws and theories, and in addition the transience of science and scientific methods all need to be taught with modern online methods. Conclusion: In this article: 1- with normal statistics, we proved that students and the general public do not know about science and its basic components; 2- we discussed the potentials of the web space to introduce science and its evolving and creative nature; and 3- suggestions were made in order to strengthen education and knowledge of science.
