Harnessing indigenous scientific discovery in medicinal chemistry to promote selected nature of science attributes among Chinese high school students: case of Artemisinin

Abstract

Though there are a multiplicity of approaches that have been used to promote Nature of Science (NOS) among school students, an approach based on exploration of a scientific discovery indigenous to the sample population, of contemporary interest, and based on a topic outside the school science syllabus seems to be lacking in the literature. This study focused on Chinese high school students (N = 98), using the discovery of an anti-malarial drug by a recent Nobel Prize winning Chinese scientist as a focus. A popular science article on this discovery formed the basis for the intervention, and a mainly qualitative approach was used. Variants of an explicit-reflective approach were used for the three groups formed by random sampling for the intervention. The four NOS attributes targeted were: socio-cultural, empirical nature, scientific method, and creativity/imagination, and these were explicitly interrogated through four open-ended questions, respectively. Responses to these questions were parked into five rating levels, which helped to explicate the extent to which the samples were able to provide descriptors to characterize their understandings. The approach based on reading of the article followed by student discussions and mediation by the instructor showed, overall, more gains in NOS as compared to just (1) reading/re-reading of the article and reflecting on it, and (2) reading of the article followed by small sub-group discussions and reflecting on it. It is suggested that there is a case for using indigenous scientific discovery as an approach to foster interest in NOS among students. Some implications of the study are discussed.