Wonder Wild: A Philosophical Approach to Understanding Teachers' and Children's Social Representations of Science

Currently we know very little about how primary school children and teachers perceive science and its nature. The aim of this study is to gain understanding by conducting a community of inquiry approach through philosophical dialogues in focus groups with children, and interviews and focus groups with teachers. This is to explore the hidden assumptions that children and teachers have about nature of science. The participants were children of year 5 from three Maltese schools and their primary school teachers. Social representations were explored using a central approach to social representations characterised by the main idea being discussed in dialogue and the meanings that children and teachers attach to the idea. This analysis of social representations indicate five social representations from teachers’ dialogue and a total of six social representations from children’s philosophical dialogue. There seems to be common ideas between children’s and teachers’ social representations of nature of science including the view that science is an activity by which scientists study, discover and understand the world in a precise and reliable way. There is agreement amongst children and teachers on some characteristics of science mainly that scientific evidence derives from both observation and experimentation, two scientific methods which took precedence in children’s talk about science. The findings within this research are useful to understand the images that children and teachers have about the nature of science to identify any challenges and concerns which may impede science learning and thus enable teachers and policy makers to meet the needs of the learners.