In-service and Preservice Teachers` Conseptions of nature of Science

Abstract

Nature of science (NOS) is an important component of scientific literacy. Science teachers can have naïve conceptions and misconceptions of NOS which is detrimental to their students’ science learning. The aim of research was to examine in-service and preservice science and mathematics teachers’ understanding of NOS conceptions using open-ended VNOS-B instrument online anonymously. 13 in-service teachers from Finland, Norway, and Russia and 21 preservice teachers from Finland participated in the research which was organized in the context of the international BeTech! project seminar in Finland in September 2019. Qualitative analysis of data from the questionnaire indicated that the conceptions of NOS were adequate in two aspects of NOS: tentative nature of scientific knowledge and creativity of scientists. Understanding the distinction between scientific theory and law, and theory-laden nature of scientific knowledge was interpreted naïve in both groups. The results of in-service and preservice teachers were very similar showing that the practice of teaching profession does not implicitly improve teacher’s understanding of NOS. In-service and preservice training using explicit reflective instruction is necessary to raise the awareness of the importance to teach NOS at schools, and to increase in-service and preservice teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge with respect to teaching NOS.