Drawing a Portrayal of Science Teachers' Epistemic Cognitions Around Different Concepts Characterizing Science Education

Abstract

The objective of this descriptive study is to provide a detailed examination of science teachers' perspectives regarding scientific knowledge, science learning, science concepts, and science teaching. A total of 304 science teachers created metaphors to express their cognitions about the epistemological aspects of their work. A specifically designed metaphor construction task was used to capture the participants' epistemic cognitions. The participants' metaphorical reasoning was captured since the metaphors might deliver experience-based conceptions, perceptions, beliefs, or comprehensions about four concepts regarding epistemic cognition. In-depth, descriptive analysis was undertaken through open, axial, and selective coding procedures with higher validity and reliability. The participants' epistemic cognitions were gathered around five-order themes: function (accepting science knowledge and science concepts and their teaching/learning as vital entities by adopting an instrumentalist or tool-based perspective), personal epistemological stance (seeing science knowledge and science learning as an endless and immortal accumulation of factual knowledge), motivational construct (scientific knowledge attaches importance so it should be taught in the school systems in the science lessons), sociological construct (science knowledge provides power), and pedagogical construct (not the science knowledge but the science concepts should be taught in the schools in the science lesson). This study concluded that the participant science teachers mostly held conventional orientations in externalizing their epistemic cognitions. Theory-based explanations are presented in terms of the participants' traditional epistemic orientations in the sense of future directions of further research.