科學新聞與科學認識觀：中學生對科學新聞的概念與詮釋

Abstract

本研究旨在探討學生對於科學新聞所持的概念、其在閱讀科學新聞過程中所使用的策略與詮釋、以及閱讀科學新聞對其科學認識觀的影響。 本研究採用質性研究的方法，針對北部某高中的36位高三學生進行三個階段的資料收集。資料收集的第一個階段，主要透過一系列的半結構晤談來探測學生對科學新聞本質的理解情形；在第二階段中，每位學生須使用放聲思考的方式閱讀科學新聞，並於閱讀完每篇科學新聞後接受半結構晤談，以深入探討其閱讀新聞的策略和閱讀新聞對其科學認識觀的影響，每位學生共計閱讀三篇科學新聞；而第三階段的資料收集，則透過一系列的半結構晤談來探測學生在閱讀三則新聞後，其所持的科學認識觀為何。 研究結果顯示，學生對科學新聞的概念廣泛的涵蓋科學、科技、社會三個層面，且其認為科學新聞所傳達的科學知識，具有非正式性、多元性、及娛樂性等特質。學生閱讀科學新聞時所採用的閱讀策略，多是為了辨認科學新聞中的重要資訊，甚少使用監控、預測和回溯等較複雜的閱讀策略。再者，學生對於科學新聞相關議題的知識背景會影響其對科學新聞內容的詮釋，並進一步影響其對科學新聞立場的認同程度，此外，雖有少部分學生能夠主動察覺科學新聞中所隱含的科學認識觀，但其既有的科學認識觀點，較難因閱讀科學新聞而產生重大的改變。

The purposes of this qualitative study were to explore students’ conceptions of scientific news, their reading strategies for reading scientific news, their interpretations of scientific news, and the relationship between reading scientific news and scientific epistemological beliefs. The participants were 36 twelveth graders from a senior high school in northern Taiwan, and all of them engaged in the following three-stage data collection. First, at the beginning of this study, a series of semi-structured interview questions were used to probe each participant’s conceptions of scientific news. Next, each participant read one piece of scientific news by thinking aloud, on a weekly basis for three consecutive weeks. Immediately after each participant finished reading a piece of scientific news, a series of follow-up interview questions were posed to investigate her/his strategies for reading the scientific news, interpretations of the scientific news, and scientific epistemological beliefs about the scientific news. Last, after each participant completed reading three pieces of scientific news, another series of semi-structured interviews were conducted to examine whether her/his scientific epistemological beliefs had been changed. The results of this study indicated that the participants’ conceptualized scientific news broadly from the scientific, technological and social aspects, and referred informality, pluralirity, and entertainability as three main characteristics of scientific news. In addition, while most of the participants could use basic reading strategies, such as identifying the important messages, for reading scientific news, only few of them used more sophiscated strategies, such as monitoring and predicting. Moreover, the participants’ background knowledge played an important role in interpreting scientific news, and might affect their comments on the news. Regarding the relationship between reading scientific news and scientific epistemological beliefs, although some of the participants could spontaneously perceive the scientific epistemological views emnedded in the three pieces of scientific news, their existing scientific epistemological beliefs could hardly be changed accordingly.