Views about science — technology — society interactions held by college students in general education physics and sts courses

Abstract

Abstract This study examined whether and to what extent a general education STS and physics courses helped college students build more informed, realistic views about the interactions among science, technology, and society. Two samples took part in the study, one consisting of 138 college students enrolled in a general education STS course, STS 200‐Critical Issues in Science, Technology and Society, and the other comprising 122 college students enrolled in a general education physics course, PHYS 001‐The Science of Physics, at a large eastern land grant university. Pretest and posttest data were collected using 16 multiple‐choice items selected from the 114 items in the Views on Science‐Technology‐Society (VOSTS) item pool. The findings for each of the 16 VOSTS items were treated descriptively. Additionally, a special scoring procedure was devised for the VOSTS items to allow the use of inferential statistics. The STS students moved toward more “realistic” views of STS interactions on a number of VOSTS items and toward more “naive” views on other VOSTS items. The findings supported the value of general education STS courses. However, they also suggested that courses like STS 200 have room for improvement. The PHYS 001 course had almost no impact on students' views of STS interactions. It should not be expected that college general education science courses, such as PHYS 001, will help students develop more adequate, realistic understandings of the STS interactions. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.