A Research-Informed Instructional Unit to Teach the Nature of Science to Pre-Service Science Teachers (original) (raw)
Related papers
The History and Philosophy of Science in Science Teacher Education
Teaching Education, 1991
Recent research indicates that teachers conceive and orient his/her teaching depending (among others things) on his/her conceptions about both the nature of science and the construction of the scientific knowledge. This is an important educational issue because the image of science that is generally held by students consider science simply as a rhetoric of conclusions. Science teaching strategies designed in line with the principles of the "new philosophy of science", e.g. emphasising the context of discovery of scientific ideas (and not simply the context of justification of those ideas), methodological pluralism and the human and social side of science (STS relationships), are usually ignored. Part of the problem lies in inadequated teacher education strategies. Thus the aim of this study was to design, to develop and to evaluate an innovative teacher education program exploring the History and the Philosophy of Science (HPS) in order to improve the teaching and learning of mass conservation in chemical reactions, a key curricular theme in Portuguese secondary teaching and also a relevant historical and cultural topic of study. The main hypothesis was that it is possible to develop in -service teacher education strategies based on the HPS to promote adequated epistemological perspectives of science teachers. The research design followed was organised in three interrelated steps: a naturalistic phase (over 40 hours of teaching of two secondary teachers were videorecorded and analysed); a second phase concerning the teacher education program itself exploring action-research strategies and involving the design of new teaching plans and the construction of new didactic materials.; the third phase in which the new teaching strategies were then implemented by the two teachers. Evidences of the evolution of the epistemological perspectives underlying teachers' practices from the first to the third phase are presented together with examples of the use of the HPS in the three methodological categories of analysis: scientific methodology, dynamics of the construction of scientific knowledge and the human and social face of science. The results of a triangular evaluation of the program (external observer, students and teachers self-evaluation) is also presented. We can conclude that the teacher education program developed exploring HPS was able to improve the teaching of the chosen topic, in particular making the students more aware of images of science congruent with the principles of the "new philosophy of science".
This study suggests a novel approach, which integrates an explicit-reflective nature of science (NOS) instruction into the teachersas-researchers approach to improve pre-service science teachers' conceptions of NOS. Participants were 48 university fourth-year students in a four-year pre-service science teacher-training program in Turkey. The participants received explicit-reflective NOS instruction and were introduced to some techniques for critically evaluating academic articles, designing and conducting a research project, writing a research report and preparing materials to share the findings of their studies with students and staff of their department at a poster conference. During these activities, the lecturer explicitly addressed the target aspects of NOS and made pre-service science teachers' thinking more visible and reflective. The Views of Nature of Science Questionnaire (VNOS-C) was used in conjunction with individual interviews to assess participants' NOS views at the beginning and conclusion of the study. The results indicated that compared with their ideas at the beginning of the course, many pre-service science teachers had developed more 'informed ideas about NOS' throughout the course. The significance of this study is that carrying out an educational research with the incorporation of an explicit-reflective instructional model seems to be a promising avenue to improve pre-service science teachers' ideas about NOS. Some possible implications for pre-service and in-service teacher education and further research are discussed.
Findings and recommendations for research-based practice in science education
2012
Aquest informe presenta les conclusions de la investigacio desenvolupada en el marc del projecte TRACES. Les conclusions es presenten en forma de recomanacions per a possibles iniciatives i politiques futures centrades en l'educacio cientifica. Aquestes recomanacions estan dirigides a tots els actors rellevants en l'escenari de l'educacio cientifica i sobretot als investigadors academics, politics i professors de primaria i secundaria.
Using the History of Science to Teach Scientific Inquiry
Journal of Baltic Science Education, 2016
The aim of the research is to detect the views of the science teacher candidates about the nature of scientific inquiry before and after a history of science based teaching process. The research was made with the participation of 18 teacher candidates, who were enrolled in the primary science-teaching department of an Istanbul-based university. The qualitative data collection and analysis methods were used in the research, which was based upon the “case studies” to uncover the views in more details. Data of the research were collected by using the document analysis and interview. The data were assessed through the content and descriptive analysis methods. The results of the research represented that the teacher candidates’ views about the guidance of the scientific questions to the scientific investigations, the multiple purposes of the scientific investigations and the justification of the scientific knowledge were “weak” in the pre-test, and their views about the remaining aspects...
Science Education and the Scientific Revolution: a way to learn about Science
2007
This paper documents some of the international curriculum documents that require that science students learn about science -its methodology, relations with wider culture, technology and worldviews-as well as learning the content and process skills of science. This wider, or cultural, goal for science courses amounts to students learning something about the history and philosophy of their subject. It is argued that some study of the Scientific Revolution is a very appropriate and rich way to forward this cultural goal. The example of the seventeenth-century debate about the shape of the earth is used to illustrate significant features of the scientific revolution, and consequently enduring features of modern science.
2012
This study suggests a novel approach, which integrates an explicit-reflective nature of science (NOS) instruction into the teachersas-researchers approach to improve pre-service science teachers' conceptions of NOS. Participants were 48 university fourth-year students in a four-year pre-service science teacher-training program in Turkey. The participants received explicit-reflective NOS instruction and were introduced to some techniques for critically evaluating academic articles, designing and conducting a research project, writing a research report and preparing materials to share the findings of their studies with students and staff of their department at a poster conference. During these activities, the lecturer explicitly addressed the target aspects of NOS and made pre-service science teachers' thinking more visible and reflective. The Views of Nature of Science Questionnaire (VNOS-C) was used in conjunction with individual interviews to assess participants' NOS views at the beginning and conclusion of the study. The results indicated that compared with their ideas at the beginning of the course, many pre-service science teachers had developed more 'informed ideas about NOS' throughout the course. The significance of this study is that carrying out an educational research with the incorporation of an explicit-reflective instructional model seems to be a promising avenue to improve pre-service science teachers' ideas about NOS. Some possible implications for pre-service and in-service teacher education and further research are discussed.
Science & Education, 2011
This paper looks into research aimed to elicit teachers' ideas about science through the development of resources as questionnaires, problematic tasks and interviews. It is focused on how those ideas are conceptualised and how such conceptualisations have been reflected in the methodological approaches adopted and the advantages and disadvantages of research instruments. This analysis suggests four broad categories to group studies considering substantially different perspectives on teachers' knowledge. Drawing upon the general finding that teachers tend to develop stereotypical views connected to science, there is an attempt to respond to the question of why such views are not sustainable from an educational point of view. A salient conclusion is that the large majority of such research remains marginal in informing pedagogical practice and faces serious conceptual and methodological challenges. It is also claimed that those studies adopting pedagogical embedded view of ideas about science do illuminate the way forward. The paper ends with a discussion on the implications of teachers' images of the world of science in their practice.
Science teaching and science teacher education involves knowing something about science itself, how scientific knowledge has been obtained, how reliable it therefore is, what its limitations are, how far we can therefore rely on it, its changing methods and also knowing something about the interface between scientific knowledge and the wider society. In brief, science teaching and science teacher education also means knowing something about the nature of science. This communication intends to illustrate how the history of chemistry can contribute to the understanding of the nature of science in science teacher education by proposing different historical episodes to deal with certain aspects of the nature of science concerning scientific research, explanations, creativity, the role of the scientific community and the interplay between science and society.