Thinking about Television Science: How Students Understand the Nature of Science from Different Program Genres

Koshi Dhingra's study looks at the role of television science in informal learning and its relationship with formal science learned in school, drawing on recent understandings of science learning that emphasize the role of informal learning outside the classroom that students bring to shape their learning of science in the classroom.

Dhingra's study identifies four different program genres of television programs from which the high school students in the study learned science or gained a view of science. These genres, news, documentary, fictional programming, and magazine format, emerged from the data.

Dhingra grouped responses to questionnaires, interviews, and free writes into coded categories, two of which emerged from the data (ethics and validity of science, science as portrayed by practitioners), and two of which where derived from the author's theoretical framework: Duschl's (1990) concept of final form science as unquestioned facts, and school science versus television science based on Bybee's (2001) study on combining free choice and free education sectors.

The most interesting finding was that the news and fiction genres offered views of science as uncertain and open to question, whereas the documentary and magazine-format genres offered final form science with little need to question the facts presented. Thus the framing of the science that was presented had a significant effect on how science was perceived. (The drama noted by the students in question at this time was The X-Files, however, which might have been unusual in its portrayal of uncertainty in science.)

Another important finding was that, especially in the case of The X-Files, but also in the case of the magazine format Bill Nye, the on-screen characters were highly important in helping the audience connect to the science, making it feel immediate and relevant to the viewer. One respondent mentioned that he felt science in fiction to be more realistic than that in documentaries because it was more relevant to experiences he imagined he would have (an operating room, versus a jungle with monkeys). The portrayal of Scully as a competent female scientist was particularly important in showing a gender divide in how the character related to viewers. Girls felt that Scully was an important role model, while boys thought that her competence in seemingly all scientific fields was unrealistic. Opinions on Bill Nye also differed from positive to "corny".

Another interesting finding was that discussion of TV science in class tended to have a leveling effect, as the teacher and student were both discussing a topic with which the students had as much, if not more, expertise than the teacher. This disruption of the usual roles was noted with tension, in cases when the teacher would reassert authority and the student was made to "feel stupid."

Dhingra concludes that documentary and magazine science should try to learn from news and fiction genres in presenting science as an uncertain process, not final form facts, and do so in a way to relate directly to people's experiences, rather than science talk "all the time" which seemed to bore some of the student viewers. This would improve such programs, both in terms of engaging the viewer more, helping them learn better, but also improve the content as viewers would better understand science as an uncertain process and be trained to think critically and debate, rather than passively receiving facts.