To uphold, as this student has, that: (1) observation derives from the frame of knowledge a person has developed, and (2) in order to know, a person must already have some knowledge, may amount to adopting a constructivist point of view on the production of knowledge. We should, of course, guard against reaching hasty conclusions on the basis of a single statement which has been removed from its overall discursive context. It is worth noting here, however, that this assertion was but one of the conclusions reached by this student following personal reflection on the process involved in producing scientific knowledge.

It was thorny questions such as these which provided the basis of a series of exchanges Marie Larochelle and I undertook with a group of thirty-five students in the first year of Cégep, a Québec two-year tertiary institution; the starting point for the exercise consisted in the simulation of a number of conditions presiding over the production of scientific knowledge. Thus, it was not the discourse of accredited epistemologists which students were asked to reflect on, but rather the personal and collective cognitive processes which students themselves engage in when they attempt to solve bona fide puzzles. To borrow a metaphor, these students were called upon to engage in an in vivo, not an in vitro, type of epistemology, by means of a reflective, informed examination of their own epistemological framework.