Literature suggests the transfer of understanding the nature of science to instructional practice requires preservice teachers to value teaching about the nature of science. Despite decades of research developing preservice teachers' views of nature of science, there is still a disconnect between their understanding and instructional practice.…

Limited research examines the critical intersection between science and special education (SPED), particularly on the nature of science (NOS) in science methods courses. This study addresses this gap by investigating 10 preservice SPED teachers' NOS understanding, NOS implications for SPED, and the integration of NOS into their lesson plans in a…

In England, both Religious Education (RE) and science are mandatory parts of the school curriculum throughout the 5-16 age range. Nevertheless, there remain concerns that, as in many countries, students do not have a good understanding about the scope of each subject nor about how the two subjects relate. This article reports on a study that…

This study, which was conducted in 2016-2017 academic year, scrutinized the impact of a purposefully designed professional development program titled 'NOS-PD' on the understandings of the Nature of Science (NOS) via instructional practices. Specifically, the purpose of this qualitative multiple-case study was to delineate the impact of a NOS…

The purpose of this study was to examine how pre-service science teachers develop their understandings of nature of scientific inquiry during the science laboratory course with preparing 5E based lesson plans, and how they transfer those understandings into their teaching practices. All data were collected and analysed qualitatively by using the…

This study examines the use of an explicit, reflective method for teaching the difference and relationship between scientific theories and laws to ninth-grade students. Students reflected individually and then as a whole class on theories and laws using a Venn diagram, both before and after reading short articles describing features of theories…

This study explores the impact of a semester-long science methods course examining pre-service elementary teachers' views on the nature of science (NOS). Also examined were NOS characteristics that pre-service teachers incorporated into their science lesson plans and peer teachings, during the course. Data used for this study were obtained from 21…

By virtue of its connection with scientific literacy, the nature of science has been considered essential subject matter for the science curriculum. With this in mind, seventh-grade students were introduced to three aspects of the nature of science: (1) the distinction between observation and inference, (2) the subjective, and (3) the tentative…