How do we manage to “do science” together? – The mutual views on the nature of science influencing the student-scientist interaction in the Imagine School Competition

Abstract

The nature of science refers to the values and assumptions inherent to the development of scientific knowledge, and can be divided in several scientific aspects. The aim of this study was to outline how different views on the nature of science can influence the relations between students and scientists in a student-scientist inquiry partnership. For this study, interviews were conducted with four scientists and four students that were assigned to them in a partnership. The interactions between scientists and students described how they were influenced by the participants’ views on the nature of science and how this can result in an either productive or non-productive collaboration. During the cases where the students and scientists perceived a common understanding of the nature of science both couples also reviewed the pleasantness of the interaction. However, during the inquiry partnerships where the student or the scientist did not perceive a common understanding of the nature of science both the scientist and student did not experience a pleasant interaction. Different phases of the inquiry were shown to be influenced by different views. Other factors possibly influencing student-scientist interactions, such as the given freedom for the students to develop their own research and the amount of structure given by the scientist, are described as well. This research could be used to improve student-scientist inquiry partnerships and could be transferable to other student-scientist inquiry partnerships, like school competitions focussed on life science and technology and socio-scientific issues.