Examining Education Students‘ Nature of Science (NOS) Views

Teaching the Nature of Science (NOS) seems to be neglected despite the many developments in the teaching science. This is becoming especially important in the light of recent developments in pedagogy, as for example, more teachers adopt constructivist methodologies and computing technology which enables similarities that may blur the lines between models and reality. Consequently, identifying effective means for teaching the nature of science (NOS) has become a central focus for science education in the recent years. Accordingly, pre-service science teaching methods courses should promote NOS understanding. It is given that if science teachers are to present effective NOS instruction, they must have informed understandings of the NOS themselves and pedagogical content knowledge about effective NOS instruction. In this investigation, Bachelor of Secondary Education major in Physical Science students‟ NOS conceptions was assessed with adapted Views of the Nature of Science (VNOS) Form-C instrument originally designed by Lederman, Adb-El-Khalick, Bell and Shwartz (2002). Responses were analyzed into coded or thematic categories of „naive‟, „informed‟ and „ambiguous‟. Most participants held inadequate views in some aspects of NOS based on the result of the study. It was found out that significant portion of respondents possessed uninformed views. It was also noted that students from lower year levels had more ambiguous and uninformed views than those in the higher year level. Some implications for teaching and teacher education are also presented in this paper for discussion.

Keywords: Nature of science, aspects of science