The investigators divide students's views on science into two groups: dynamic or static based on responses to a questionnaire. The static view of science treats it as objective and unchanging except due to new data. It considers scientists to be objective and textbooks to be completely correct. Students tending towards this view deal with science through memorization. Their knowledge tends to be poorly organized, and examples (prototypes) are more helpful to them than principles. Students with dynamic views, on the other hand, understand that scientists can have different perspectives on the same problem (which are reflected in their textbooks), and that new perspectives as well as new data change scientific understanding. They organize their scientific knowledge around principles, and treat questions as problems to be solved by deduction, rather than by comparison with a prototype.
