“…Epistemological assessments, whether surveys or interviews, routinely ask students to describe the purpose of experimentation or the relation between experimentation and theory, or prior ideas of some sort (Aikenhead, Fleming, & Ryan, 1987;Carey et al, 1989;Cooley & Klopfer, 1963;Lederman et al, 2002;Mackay, 1971;Ryan & Aikenhead, 1992;Smith et al, 2000). Still others ask students to evaluate experimental designs in terms of their capacity to test or discriminate between ideas (e.g., Driver et al, 1996;Koslowski, 1996;Kuhn et al, 1988;Leach et al, 2000;Linn & Songer, 1993), and then researchers draw inferences about how these evaluations reflect epistemological conceptions.…”