The Influence of Documentary Films on 8th Grade Students’ Views about Nature of Science

Abstract

AbstractThis quasi-experimental study aims to investigate documentary films' influence on 8th grade students' nature of science views. The study's participants were 113 8th grade students from two different schools taught by two different teachers. The study was completed over a 6-week period, during which topics related to Cell Division and Heredity and Force and Motion were covered. In experimental group, six documentary films were integrated into science curriculum to teach ideas about nature of science. The control group, however, followed regular science curriculum. The Views of Nature of Science Elementary Level (VNOS-E) questionnaire developed by Lederman and Ko (2004) was used as data collection tool. In addition, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 28 students using VNOS-E questionnaire at beginning and end of study. The results suggest that students in control group showed no significant improvement in their understanding about nature of science in response to instruction.However, students in experimental group showed statistically improvements in their understanding about four of five nature of science themes in response to instruction. In addition, a statistically significant difference was found between views of experimental group and those of control group students in post-test results for four of five nature of science themes. The results suggest that use of documentary films in science classrooms has potential to enhance students' views about nature of science.Keywords: Nature of science * Documentary film * Movies in science education * Science communicationCultivating engaged and scientifically literate citizens is defined as one of main objectives of several science curricula and policy documents; namely, American Association for Advancement of Science [AAAS], 1990; National Research Council [NRC], 1996; NGSS Lead States, 2013; Nuffield Twenty First Century Science, 2007; and in Turkish Science and Technology Education Curriculum (Milli Egitim Bakanligi [MEB], 2005, 2013). Understanding nature of science is seen as an essential and critical component of scientific literacy in these documents and curricula (Lederman, 2007). The phrase, nature of science, usually is used to refer to the epistemology and sociology of science, science as a way of knowing, or values and beliefs inherent to scientific knowledge and its development (Lederman, Abd-El-Khalick, Bell & Schwartz, 2002, p. 498). In literature in most cases phrase nature of science has been used to refer to nature of scientific knowledge or phrase nature of science and nature of scientific knowledge have been used interchangeably; nonetheless, they are quite different (Hodson, 2014). That has caused some misunderstanding; therefore, in this paper NOS refers to nature of scientific knowledge (Lederman, Antink, & Bartos, 2014). Although there is no single and universally accepted definition of NOS (Erduran & Dagher, 2014) at present significant academic consensus has been achieved on which aspects of NOS are to be taught in school science classes (Lederman et al., 2002; Smith, Lederman, Bell, McComas, & Clough, 1997; Smith & Scharman, 1999). These aspects include teaching students that scientific knowledge, its facts, theories, and are both reliable and tentative (NOS-1), empirically based (based on and/or derived from observations of natural world) (NOS-2), subjective and/or theory-laden (NOS-3), partly product of human imagination and creativity (NOS-4), subject to a distinction between observations and inferences (NOS-5), influenced by social and cultural factors (NOS6), and that theories and laws are different kinds of knowledge (NOS-7) (Lederman, 1992, 2007). It was suggested that first five aspects (NOS1-5) would be suitable for middle school students (Akerson, Abd-El-Khalick, & Lederman, 2000; Akerson & Donnelly, 2010; Parker, 2010). …