Nature Of Science Issues Research Articles

The Relationship between Student Science Teachers’ Views on Nature of Science and Classroom Practice: Is There Any?

The present study investigated the relationship between student science teachers’ views on Nature of Science and their views on the importance of teaching Nature of Science. It is a case study in which qualitative methods and descriptive statistics are used. The sample consisted of 23 student science teachers who attended a faculty course on Didactics of Physics and participated voluntarily. Preliminary findings showed a moderate relationship between students’ views on Nature of Science issues and their classroom practice, particularly regarding “tenets” such as the tentative character of science and sociocultural milieu. When it comes to more epistemological issues, such as the difference between a theory and a law, then student teachers have considerable conceptual difficulties and they also find the particular “tenets” less important for a school science context.

Understanding the Nature of Science Through a Critical and Reflective Analysis of the Controversy Between Pasteur and Liebig on Fermentation

This article presents a qualitative study, descriptive-interpretive in profile, of the effectiveness in learning about the nature of science (NOS) of an activity relating to the historical controversy between Pasteur and Liebig on fermentation. The activity was implemented during a course for pre-service secondary science teachers (PSSTs) specializing in physics and chemistry. The approach was explicit and reflective. Three research questions were posed: (1) What conceptions of NOS do the PSSTs show after a first reflective reading of the historical controversy?, (2) What role is played by the PSSTs’ whole class critical discussion of their first reflections on the aspects of NOS dealt with in the controversy?, and (3) What changes are there in the PSSTs’ conceptions of NOS after concluding the activity? The data for analysis was extracted from the PSSTs’ group reports submitted at the end of the activity and the audio-recorded information from the whole class discussion. A rubric was prepared to assess this data by a process of inter-rater analysis. The results showed overall improvement in understanding the aspects of NOS involved, with there being a significant evolution in some cases (e.g., conception of scientific theory) and moderate in others (e.g., differences in scientific interpretations of the same phenomenon). This reveals that the activity has an educational utility for the education of PSSTs in NOS issues. The article concludes with an indication of some educational implications of the experience.

Un caso de Historia de la Ciencia para aprender Naturaleza de la Ciencia: Semmelweis y la fiebre puerperal

The Semmelweis case is presented as an interesting story of the History of Science to address in science classroom a set of questions related to the Nature of Science (NOS) from an explicit and reflective approach. The teaching proposal is aimed to the prospective Secondary Education science teachers training in NOS issues and its didactics. Attention is given to both epistemic and non-epistemic aspects in the text of Semmelweis case and the NOS questions asked. Also, some methodological recommendations for implementing and assessing the didactic proposal in science classroom are offered.

Positive attitudinal shifts with the Physics by Inquiry curriculum across multiple implementations

Recent publications have documented positive attitudinal shifts on the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey (CLASS) among students enrolled in courses with an explicit epistemological focus. We now report positive attitudinal shifts in classes using the Physics by Inquiry (PbI) curriculum, which has only an implicit focus on student epistemologies and nature of science issues. These positive shifts have occurred in several different implementations of the curriculum, across multiple institutions and multiple semesters. In many classes, students experienced significant attitudinal shifts in the problem-solving categories of the CLASS, despite the conceptual focus of most PbI courses.

Addressing Nature-of-Science Core Tenets with the History of Science: AN EXAMPLE WITH SICKLE-CELL ANEMIA & MALARIA

For the past two decades, there has been increasing emphasis in science education to facilitate learning of the nature of science (National Research Council, 1996; Osborne et al., 2003). The issues that fall under the domain of nature of science are wide ranging, and while there is some disagreement about the importance of various natureofscience issues, recent science education literature demonstrates that some issues are regarded as more fundamental or core to student understanding of science (Lederman et al., 2002; McComas, 2005a). These nature-of-science core tenets include such things as (McComas, 2005b): * Science demands and relies on empirical evidence. * Knowledge production in science shares common methods and shared habits of mind, norms, logical thinking and methods (such as careful observation and data recording, truthfulness in reporting, etc.). --Experiments are not the only route to knowledge. --Science uses both inductive reasoning and hypothetico-deductive testing. --However, there is no one step-wise scientific method by which all science is done. * Laws and theories are related but distinct kinds of scientific knowledge. * Science has a creative component. * Scientific knowledge is tentative, durable and self correcting (meaning that science cannot prove anything but scientific conclusions are still valuable and long-lasting because of the way in which they are developed). * Science has a subjective component (theory-laden character). * There are historical, cultural, and social influences on the practice of science. * Science and technology impact each other, but are not the same. * Science and its methods cannot answer all questions. Episodes from the history of science are particularly useful for helping students understand the nature of science, and at least partially for this reason, stakeholders have often advocated using the history of science in science teaching to promote student understanding of one or more of these core ideas. Though the development of NOS core tenets has been an important step in establishing targeted benchmarks for NOS instruction, teachers need examples that they can use instrumentally in the classroom to give students meaningful contexts from which they can interpret the relevance of NOS issues. At the same time, it is important that teachers who are receptive to the use of HOS be knowledgeable of how to interpret other HOS episodes in light of their potential worth for teaching NOS. The following is an example of this instrumental approach in using the history of genetics on heterozygote protection in sickle-cell anemia to help students to connect to multiple NOS tenets. The case is followed by a brief discussion about practical considerations for adopting this approach with other episodes from the HOS. Sickle-Cell Anemia & Heterozygote Protection Sickle-cell anemia is a recessive genetic disease that affects the proper function of the human red blood cell. Persons who possess two defective copies of the gene that codes for a portion of the hemoglobin molecule produce red blood cells that become sickled in shape when they are exposed to low oxygen levels, as is commonly found in the venous system. Persons who suffer from the disease experience extreme shortness of breath and pain known as sickle crises, and the disease has both short--and long-term potential negative consequences for the normal functioning of the cardiovascular system. The genetics of the disease are frequently used in introductory biology textbooks to illustrate the concept of heterozygote protection (e.g., Cain et al., 2000). The underlying idea is that heterozygotes (carriers) of the disease are afforded a measure of protection against malaria. There are certain areas of the world where people face near continual exposure to the mosquito that often carries the parasitic agent of malaria, Plasmodium falciparum (http://evolution. …

Recapitulating the History of Sickle-Cell Anemia Research

This paper provides an argument in favor of a specific pedagogical method of using the history of science to help students develop more informed views about nature of science (NOS) issues. The paper describes a series of lesson plans devoted to encouraging students to engage, unbeknownst to them, in similar reasoning that led scientists to understand sickle-cell anemia from the perspective of multiple subdisciplines in biology. Students pursue their understanding of a ‘mystery disease’ by means of a series of open-ended problems that invite them to discuss it from the perspective of anatomy, physiology, ecology, evolution, and molecular and cell biology. Throughout this unit, instructors incorporate techniques that invite students to explicitly and reflectively discuss various NOS issues with reference to this example and more generally. It is argued on the grounds of constructivist tenets that this pedagogy has substantial advantages over more implicit approaches. The findings of an empirical study using an open-ended survey and follow-up, semi-structured interviews to assess students’ pre- and post-instruction NOS conceptions support the efficacy of this approach.

How some college students represent their understandings of the nature of scientific theories

This study explores college students' representations about the nature of theories during their enrollment in a large astronomy course with instruction designed to address a number of nature of science issues. We focus our investigation on how nine students represent their understanding of theory, how they distinguish between scientific theories and non‐scientific theories, and how they reason about specific theories. Students' notions of theory were classified under four main categories: (1) hypothesis, (2) idea with evidence, (3) explanation, and (4) explanation based on evidence. Students' condition for deciding whether a given idea is a scientific theory or not were classified under six criteria: content domain, convention, evidence, mathematical content, methodology, and tentativeness. Students expressed slight levels of variation between their reasoning about scientific theories in general and specific theories they learned in the course. Despite increased sophistication in some students' representations, this study affirms the complex dimensions involved in teaching and assessing student understanding about theories. The implications of this study underscore the need to explicitly address the nature of proof in science and issues of tentativeness and certainty students associate with scientific theories, and provide students with more opportunities to utilize the language of science.