During the years 1995 through 2000 (and intermittently thereafter) the Views About Science Survey (Halloun & Hestenes, 1996 – see Appendix 9) was administered to thousands of
high school and college science students and also to many teachers and instructors. Halloun &
Hestenes describe the “VASS” as “a survey of student views about science for the purpose of
assessing the influence of these views on learning.” They used survey data to develop “profiles”
with respect to respondents’ views about science. At the extremes are “expert” and “folk” views
and in between is a “mixed” or “transitional” view. I will go into more detail about this survey
later, but suffice it to say that Halloun & Hestenes found that college instructors generally hold
“expert” views about science, high school teachers do so as well but not as consistently, and
most students considerably less so.