A Chinese young adult non-scientist's epistemologies and her understandings of the concept of speed

Abstract

Past research has investigated students’ epistemologies while they were taking courses that required an integrated understanding of mathematical and scientific concepts. However, past studies have not investigated students who are not currently enrolled in such classes. Additionally, past studies have primarily focused on individuals who are native English speakers from Western cultures. In this paper, we aim to investigate whether Hammer and his colleagues’ claims concerning learners’ epistemologies could be extended to individuals who lack advanced mathematics and science training, have had different cultural and learning experiences, and have grown up speaking and learning in another language. To this end, we interviewed a participant with these characteristics about her understandings of the concept of speed. Our findings show that previous theoretical frameworks can be used to explain the epistemologies of the individual examined in this study. The case suggests that these theories may be relevant regardless of the learner's mathematics and science background, language, educational experience, and cultural background. In the future, more cases should be examined with learners from different academic backgrounds and cultures to further support this finding.

Keywords:

• epistemology
• young adult
• novice

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to express their gratitude to David Hammer and Gary Goldstein for their feedback and comments on previous versions of this paper. The authors also thank Klara for her participation in this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. In Chinese, velocity and speed are the same word; therefore, there is no verbal difference when the subject says speed (an everyday word describing how fast an object is moving) and when she says velocity (a physics term for the vector describing how fast and in what direction an object is moving). When translating the interview, carried out in Chinese, into English for this paper, we use the word speed whenever Klara spoke. By doing this, we are assuming that because of her novice background in physics it is unlikely that she would have used the physics term.

2. In his work, Hammer [1] also found some intermediate beliefs that cannot be definitively categorized into any of the six aforementioned groups along the three dimensions. For example, Weak Coherence/Weak Conceptual represents the belief that physics should be a coherent knowledge system, and the formulas should be conceptual meaningful, but the responsibility to make the system coherent and the formulas meaningful lies with the experts, not with the learners themselves.[1]

3. What Klara called inertia was in some sense similar to the canonical meaning of inertia in physics; that is, the attribute of an object that keeps it moving (or at rest) at the same velocity. But she also believed, although not very confidently, that inertia was a force or strength. This made the inertia she was talking about also like the naïve physics concept of impetus, an inert agent in the direction of motion that drives the moving object. Finally, she mentioned speed in relation to inertia, so what she called inertia was also similar to the concept of momentum.

4. Each time the interviewer asked Klara to show her idea on a piece of paper, the interviewer was expecting that Klara would draw a graph. However, throughout the interview Klara never came up with a graph.