Keyword: nature of science

ABSTRACT: Several literature sources discuss the importance of nature of science (NOS) understanding and how having an understanding is central to being a scientifically literate citizen. As a result, developing NOS understanding is one of the most commonly stated objectives for science education. Acquiring views on NOS has been a prominent feature of research in this area since the 1960s. The following article provides a proof of concept for the transformation of a theoretical framework into a practical assessment tool (worksheet). The reconceptualized family resemblance approach to NOS is a theoretical framing of NOS which describes components of science in terms of categories subsumed under epistemic, cognitive and social systems. The aim is to explore its potential for use in science education and demonstrate its functionality so as to collect data on pre-service teachers’ understanding of NOS and substantiate what can be achieved through its application. The designed assessment tool has many purposes and in this case it was used in a pre-, post-, and delayed-post methodology to investigate pre-service teachers’ understanding of NOS following participation in NOS themed workshops. Implications for science teacher education will be discussed.

ABSTRACT: This paper studies four key aspects of the instrument “Views of Nature of Science” (VNOS); a) its general characteristics, b) the particular characteristics of the forms VNOS-A, VNOS-B, VNOS-C, VNOS-D; VNOS-D+ and VNOS-E, c) the modifications of its open-ended questions, and finally, d) the scope and limitations of the VNOS forms from the new conceptualizations of the Nature of Science (NOS) construct. The methodology is based on documentary research. The criteria of validity and reliability of Scott (1990) are followed. The open-ended questions of VNOS are analysed from four identified inductive categories: extension, reduction, substitution and fragmentation. The main contributions of the article are: 1. Delve into the characterization of VNOS, and its forms, allowing future NOS researchers to interpret the data obtained from the VNOS forms. Thus, each VNOS form identifies open-ended questions focused on various aspects of NOS (direct questions) and open questions focused on a specific context. The VNOS-C form presents more open-ended questions in a specific context and may be of greater interest for research in some populations. Explicit and implicit questions are also identified. The VNOS-D + form has more open-ended questions. Researchers are probably able to find units of analysis to characterize NOS views more easily in the VNOS-D+ form. 2. Relate the open-ended questions and NOS aspects characterize in each VNOS form. 3. Group open-ended questions by characterized NOS aspects, which is of interest for research focused on a particular NOS aspect. 4. Finally, the possibility of characterizing views on “scientific methods” is highlighted, especially when VNOS is used in conjunction with monitoring interviews, as well as with the “Views About Scientific Inquiry” (VASI) instrument. Similarly, it relates to the potential of VNOS forms to characterize some aspects coming from other NOS conceptualizations, especially from “features of science” (FOS) raised by Mathews (2012). All of the above, contributes conceptually and methodologically, to the identification of NOS views of primary and secondary students and their teachers. This is necessary to carry out diagnoses of NOS views in different communities, to propose evaluations of the impact of different teaching strategies and to relate NOS with other constructs, which together allow for the development of skills for informed socioscientific decision-making in the population in general.

ABSTRACT: Having an adequate understanding of the Nature of Science (NOS) is an integral part of scientific literacy. However, NOS is usually not yet explicitly embedded in the science curricula at German universities. To fill this gap, we have introduced NOS elements in the undergraduate course on genetics at the biology department of an Institute of Technology in North-western Germany in summer semester 2018. The strategy used an exclusive-reflective approach by emphasising socio-scientific issues. As Kostas Kampourakis (2016) suggests, our design considers not only general aspects of the NOS concept, but also the family resemblance approach presented by Erduran and Dagher (2014). To evaluate changes in students’ NOS understanding, we did a pre- and post-survey about their NOS understanding following the SUSSI questionnaire designed by Liang et al. (2008). The NOS understanding of the 93 participants shows statistically significant improvement in 14 out of 24 items (58,3%) after the teaching unit, compared to the pre-survey. While the pre-survey shows a larger gap of understanding regarding the relations of environment, theory, and law, the post-test results show significant effects on learning, in particular regarding subjective, social, and cultural influences on science. However, the students’ understanding regarding the relations of environment, theory, and law still remains weak. The findings indicate that some preconceptions were not as amenable to change as others. In particular, the assumed facticity of scientific knowledge seems to be a powerful preconception that is much more firmly fixed than the contextualization of scientific discovery.