The Use of Clinical Interviews to Develop Inservice Secondary Science Teachers’ Nature of Science Knowledge and Assessment of Student Nature of Science Knowledge

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To fully incorporate nature of science knowledge into classrooms, teachers must be both proficient in their own nature of science knowledge, but also skillful in translating their knowledge into a learning environment which assesses student knowledge. Twenty-eight inservice teachers enrolled in a graduate course which in part required a clinical interview. For the interview, teachers developed six increasingly difficult questions, interviewed a student, and analyzed the result. Findings show that while teachers needed scaffolding to write cognitively higher questions, they were, however, encouraged to shift their practice from asking questions that had one-word answers to engaging students in connecting knowledge.