Over the past several decades, science education reforms have called for students to develop appropriate views of the nature of science and have a comprehensive understanding of subject matter. Additionally, education research has demonstrated that teachers must have appropriate views of the nature of science and strong content knowledge as…

The study consisted of three articles. Article one aimed to determine if there were any significant difference in science graduate students' (SGSs') conceptions of the "consensus tenets" of the nature of science (NOS) with respect to demographic factors -- the SGSs' academic and research characteristics. The participants were SGSs from…

Changing student conceptions in physics is a difficult process and has been a topic of research for many years. The purpose of this study was to understand what prompted students to change or not change their incorrect conceptions of Newtons Second or Third Laws in response to an intervention, Interactive Video Vignettes (IVVs), designed to…

Evolution is the cornerstone of biological sciences, but anti-evolution teaching has become a global controversy since the introduction of evolutionary ideas into the United States high school science curricula in 1914. It is suggested that teachers' attitude toward and acceptance of the theory of evolution will influence their effect of teaching…

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of a socioscientific issues-based instructional model on secondary agricultural education students' content knowledge, scientific reasoning ability, argumentation skills, and views of the nature of science. This study utilized a pre-experimental, single group pretest-posttest design to assess…

Although teacher educators have successfully helped K-12 teachers' develop adequate views of NOS, their views have not been transferred to their students. It is evident that K-12 students' understanding of NOS still does not align with the recommendation of the reforms document, indicating that holding an adequate view of NOS is…

With the continual growth and demand of online courses, higher education institutions are attempting to meet the needs of today's learners by modifying and developing new student centered services and programs. As a result, faculty members are being forced into teaching online, including Earth and Space science faculty. Online Earth and Space…

Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) has been described as an assemblage of the most powerful analogies, demonstrations, examples and illustrations that make content knowledge understandable to students, together with an understanding of the preconceptions and alternate conceptions that students bring with them to the classroom (Shulman, 1986). In…

This study examined the understanding of nature of science among participants in their final year of a 4-year undergraduate teacher education program at a Midwest liberal arts university. The Logic Model Process was used as an integrative framework to focus the collection, organization, analysis, and interpretation of the data for the purpose of…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of a summer science camp teaching experience on preservice elementary teachers' science teaching efficacy, science content knowledge, and understanding of the nature of science. Master's degree students enrolled in the elementary Fairfax Partnership Schools (FPS, n = 21) cohort served as the…