The Learner’s Understanding

Abstract

We all feel we know what it is to understand, and there is a good deal of research in science education on learners’ understanding of various topics. Yet research into understanding may take two very different forms. One (normative-positivistic) approach looks to evaluate the extent to which students understand concepts canonically; whereas an interpretative approach seeks to make sense of how learners themselves understand certain science topics and concepts. This chapter compares the two approaches, and explores the inherent difficulties in either kind of research given the way research techniques necessarily collect indirect data (as ‘understanding’ is not directly observable) and rely upon researchers forming their own models of scientific subject matter and/or aspects of learners’ conceptual structures. The challenges of this kind of research leave open alternative ways of interpreting data, especially where learners may seem to hold several ways of understanding the ‘same’ science concept. Key issues here are the distinction between entertaining a way of understanding, and committing to it (believing it is so); and the possibility of metaunderstanding (understanding of another’s way of understanding a target, without adopting that way of understanding the target oneself) versus multiple understanding (where several ways of understanding are held, which may be elicited in different contexts, or even sequentially in a single context).