Adolescent Students ’ Images of an Environmental Scientist : An Opportunity for Constructivist Teaching

Children learn about science from many different sources. Outside school these sources may be books, television programs, and movies. At school, textbooks, science lessons, and teachers’ behavior and personalities exert influence on their perceptions of the nature of science and the scientists as persons. Whether they are in school, at home, or in the community, other people may influence children’s learning that may include other children as well as adults such as parents, teachers, coaches, or members of the community. The studies by Driver (1983), Osborne and Freyberg (1985), and Fosnot (1989) reported that children have a natural tendency to make sense of their experiences. Chaille and Britain (1991) consider children as theory builders and social beings while Bransford, et al. (2000) characterize children as both problem solvers and problem generators. These researchers assume that children learn actively by constructing knowledge rather than passively taking in information. This constructivist conception of the learner acknowledges the different, more or less complex prior understandings and cultural values that the learner brings to the educational setting (Chaille and Britain, 1991, p. 11). The current study demonstrates that adolescent students’ perception of an environmental scientist is a construction of knowledge mediated by learning experiences and prior understandings provided by members of the community.