From Titius-Bode’s Law to the dispute between Dark Matter and Modified Newton’s Dynamics: an epistemological trajectory through Astronomy

In undergraduate courses, discussions on Epistemology are usually made disconnected from technical discussions, often carried out only in specific disciplines. Seeking to break this chasm between the technical and pedagogical contents of Physics degrees, we present an analysis of na outreach course on Astrophysics and Epistemology, offered to science teachers and Physics undergraduates. In this course, different episodes of Astronomy and Astrophysics were discussed accordingly to epistemological conceptions. Our objective was to allow students to reflect on their own conceptions, confronting them with the different possibilities. To evaluate the intervention, a pre-test and post-test were carried out, in which the participants expressed their agreement with 10 statements about the nature of science. Responses were analyzed using the statistical method of Multidimensional Scaling. Our results show that, initially, the answers lacked internal consistency and the participants showed the same degree of agreement regarding competing views on the nature of science. After the course, the participants began to position themselves more coherently, agreeing with characteristics of the same epistemological vision and moving away from competing visions.

Keywords
Epistemology; Astronomy; Teacher Education