Nature of Science Views and Epistemological Views of College Biology Students

Epistemological views characterise how individuals view the certainty, source and organization of knowledge. Previous research has demonstrated some relationships between epistemological views and nature of science (NOS) views. These relationships may be particularly interesting for biology students who are learning about topics such as evolution which are societally controversial but not scientifically controversial. In this study, we examine the relationship between epistemological views and empirical NOS views for three classes of college biology learners in a Midwestern US university. We used the Learning Contexts Questionnaire to characterise participants’ epistemological Perry levels and question 1 of the VNOS-C to characterise their empirical NOS views. Based on a series of chi-square analyses, no relationship between Perry level and empirical NOS views was identified. Significant relationships between empirical NOS views and gender and empirical NOS views and biology class were identified. These findings and implications for future work are discussed.