I am interested in testing worldviews - at the assumption/presupposition/pre-theoretical (Weltanschauung) level. (This is not a test of espoused beliefs.) Harvard's IAT seems to do this in a very limited way but I am looking for something that could be used with teachers during and/or after postgraduate training to assess worldview stances and assessing any transformation of worldview assumptions.
For pre-theoretical stages of beliefs/worldviews research, a paper by Pechey and Halliga (2012) could be consulted as it considers ontology of beliefs:
Jo Rachel Pechey and Peter W Halliga (2012). Exploring the Folk Understanding of Belief: Identifying Key Dimensions Endorsed in the General Population. Journal of Cognition and Culture 12, 81–99.
Dear Geoff
Let me begin by saying that, in 1942, Stephan Peeper spoke about four paradigms or worldviews in Science (Formism, Mechanism, Contextualism, and Organicism) in his famous book titled World Hypotheses: A study of evidence. Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Each paradigm appeals to a specific root metaphor. The root metaphor of mechanism is the machine. The root metaphor of formism is similarity. The root metaphor of contextualism is the ongoing act in context. And the root metaphor of organicism is the process of organic development, as living, growing, organic systems. Mechanism and formism are analytic: The whole is reducible to its parts. The parts are basic, the whole derived. Organicism and contextualism are synthetic: The whole is basic, the parts derived. Formism and contextualism are dispersive: Facts are related when they are found to be so, not by assumption. Chance, therefore, is not denied in these hypotheses. Mechanism and organicism are integrative: Facts are related by assumption and order is categorical. As such, chance is denied. Dispersive world views or hypotheses tend to be higher in scope than in precision; integrative world hypotheses tend to be higher in precision than in scope.
Skinner's theory of learning is an example of a mechanistic approach. Piaget's theory of development is an organismic approach. Life-span developmental psychology (see Baltes, 1987) and Bronfennbrener's (1979) ecological approach to human development are only two examples of a contextualist view of the world. Fodor's (1983) theory of the modularity of mind is just an example of a formistic paradigm or world's view.
All that said, I think that worldview assumptions are not tested or subject to falsification as a whole. What is testable are empirical researches carried out from a certain worldview.The more these researches resist to falsification the more progressive (see, in this respect, John Laudan's thinking) the worldview at hand is progressive and survives. In other words, worldviews assumptions are epistemological presumptions, theoretical presuppositions, frameworks or starting points to frame one's empirical researches. Thus, I interpret your idea of testing worldviews assumptions as testing the empirical propositions or hypotheses derived from such assumptions. Am I correct?
I hope I have got your question and that this helps.
Best regards.
Thank you Larisa for the article. It is an interesting piece of research.
And thank you Orlando for your extensive response. The particular metaphor used in the explication of the term worldview will depend, naturally, on one's worldview...and there are numerous frameworks that can be used. I agree that Weltanschauungen per se cannot be "tested" however the possibility may exist to deduce factors contributing to a subject's subconscious understanding of what is "normal" for them. The IAT claims to do that to at least some extent and perhaps Rogerian counselling techniques could be used with a limited number of subjects.
All education is transforming of course, but as I mentioned, I am looking at ways of identifying any transformation of assumptions such as the classroom practitioner's view of "normal" for themselves as teachers due to the input of a postgrad degree program. Superficial changes in practice may result and these may be indicative of deeper level change but could also be attempts to accommodate practice to a norm that is not necessarily incorporated into the self-view of the subject (c.f., the difference between espoused/declarative beliefs and implicit assumptions).
Thanks again.
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