Students are not inferential-misfits: Naturalising logic in the science classroom

Abstract

Currently, there is a focus in science education on preparing students for lives as innovative and resilient citizens of the twenty-first century. Key to this is providing students with opportunities, mainly through inquiry processes, for discovery making and developing their creative reasoning by bringing school science closer to authentic science. I propose, building on the work of Woods, Magnani and the authors of a 2005 special issue of Educational Philosophy and Theory on Peirce, that these efforts can be advanced through the adoption of a Peircean logic of discovery in the science classroom. I further suggest that this can only take place if a classical logic that frames school science, which deems abduction—the creative element of reasoning that drives discovery—as fallacious and not valuable as an inference making process, is replaced with a naturalised logic. Such a logic positions students as practical, not ideal agents of reasoning who in their hypothesis making are inferential-experts not inferential-misfits. In doing so, I propose that actualising Peirce’s vision of education is advanced, particularly as regards science education.

Keywords:

• Peirce
• abduction
• reasoning
• discovery
• logic
• science

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Mainstream mathematical logic is a manifestation of classical logic.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Joseph Paul Ferguson

Joseph Paul Ferguson is a research fellow in the School of Education at Deakin University. He is interested in exploring the use of video-based methodologies to investigate student reasoning in science, in particular abductive reasoning as part of the discovery process. He is also interested in the way in which film studies can inform the use of video in educational research. Joseph also has an interest in the interaction between religion and science in the classroom.