Abstract
In order to educate scientifically literate children, teachers are required to include nature of science (NOS) in their classroom practice. However, as biology teachers’ own understanding of NOS is limited, promoting an initial understanding of NOS in teacher education is crucial. The aim of this study is to elucidate the importance of the first phase of teacher education for biology teachers’ understanding of NOS. More precisely, the study aims to examine the relationship between institutional determinants (e.g., the type of teacher education programme) and learning opportunities for pre-service biology teachers’ understanding of NOS. Pre-service biology teachers (N = 232) participated in a cross-sectional testing. The corresponding descriptions of N = 649 modules of biology teacher education from 20 German universities were analysed. Qualitative and quantitative methods were applied to relate the institutional determinants and the individual amount of learning opportunities to pre-service biology teachers’ understanding of NOS. Results reveal that both institutional determinants as well as the amount of learning opportunities are related to pre-service biology teachers’ understanding of NOS. This indicates that teacher education at university represents an important phase for biology teachers’ understanding of NOS. The results are discussed in terms of consequences for further research and teacher education.
Highlights
Knowing about nature of science (NOS) and applying it to contextualised problems contributes to being scientifically literate [1,2,3,4]
To gain information about the role of teacher education for the understanding of NOS, we focus on learning opportunities over the course of teacher education at university, as well as on institutional determinants
The results reveal a positive relationship between the assumed institutional determinants and pre-service biology teachers’ understanding of NOS
Summary
Knowing about nature of science (NOS) and applying it to contextualised problems contributes to being scientifically literate [1,2,3,4]. Using knowledge and knowing how it is generated requires a corresponding understanding of nature of science (NOS). To enable students to become scientifically literate citizens, the understanding of NOS has to be promoted in the science classroom. In order to promote scientific literacy and to provide suitable instruction in their classrooms, teachers themselves need an appropriate understanding of NOS [9,10]. Science teachers’ classroom practice reflects their understanding of NOS, which is typically not ‘adequate’ [8]. Teacher education should consider NOS to be of the same importance as knowledge of other science concepts [12] and prepare future teachers for
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