Seeing the natural world: a tension between pupils’ diverse conceptions as revealed by their visual representations and monolithic science lessons

In this paper we report on drawings of the natural environment produced by a sample of 13-14 year-olds. One of our interests is in the extent to which these young people see the world in the way rewarded in science lessons. With rare exceptions, school science generally assumes that for any scientific issue there is a single valid scientific conception so that alternative conceptions are misconceptions. The drawings reveal a plurality of ways in which the natural environment is portrayed and we conclude that there is scientific as well as other worth in this diversity. We argue that schools need to take account of this diversity; many pupils will not be interested in a single, monolithic depiction of the natural world in their school science lessons