Rwandan Senior Secondary Physics Students’ Views on Nature of Science

Abstract

Although the nature of science (NOS) is recognized worldwide as an important aspect of promoting the understanding of science subjects in schools but very little research has been conducted in this regard in the Rwandan context. This study investigates the status of Rwandan senior secondary physics students’ views on NOS aspects. The instrument for data collection in this study is made up of 30 items adapted from “Views of Nature of Science-B”; “Student Understanding of Science and Scientific Inquiry (SUSSI)”; and “Views of Nature of Science-C (VNOS-C)”. After establishing the reliability of the instrument, we administered this questionnaire to 148 senior secondary physics students from four schools (i.e. randomly selected two boarding schools and two day schools) from Kicukiro and Kayonza districts. Frequency, mean, and standard deviation were calculated, and a t-test was used as part of the data analysis. The findings of this study indicate that many of the students have strongly held and naïve views about all targeted NOS aspects. The naïve views are predominantly related to the tentative nature of science; empiricism; the relationship between scientific theories and laws; social contexts in knowledge construction; and scientific methods, compared to other remaining targeted NOS aspects which are observation and inferences; and imagination and creativity. The study revealed that, overall, students’ understanding of NOS is not influenced by gender or school location. However, a more detailed look shows slight variations between male and female students on some items.