Chapter 9: Reframing Non-Science Majors’ Fundamental Understandings about Scientific Inquiry and Scientists

Our knowledge of people’s naïve beliefs about inquiry has grown, and a greater attention to scientists and the work that they do has been achieved. Research, however, continues to document naïve understandings. The non-science majors entering our undergraduate science course were no exception. Although they initially responded to our query that anyone can be a scientist, when their beliefs in this regard were explored, stereotypical understandings of scientists and scientific inquiry emerged. Thus, we sought to reframe our practice. The questions guiding our research were: To what extent did course reconceptualization efforts lead to broader and more specific understandings of scientific inquiry and scientists? and In what ways did the strategies enacted in the reconceptualization course foster or hinder students’ understandings of scientific inquiry and scientists? In this chapter, we provide a description of our intervention, the findings associated with implementation, and subsequent revisions.