The perspective of students and young researchers in biology about science

Abstract

In the framework of studies about the formation of beliefs about science in areas of disciplinary training, this study does research into the perspectives of undergraduate students and young researchers in Biology, in order to examine how and how much the beliefs of the latter could be modified, given the short time that has elapsed between the completion of undergraduate training and the beginning of graduate research trajectories. Doing so, this research intends to characterize and compare their perspectives on scientific knowledge. A semi-structured questionnaire was applied that included pre-categorized approaches and a task for the construction of explanations about: a) the nature of science, b) the substantial operations of the scientific task, c) the properties of scientific theories and d) the attributions on observation. The analysis of the results shows that what has been constructed in the disciplinary praxis is made explicit in an image of science in which an objectivist ontology and a certainly relativistic epistemology prevail.