No abstract

Vee diagrams have been a metacognitive tool to help in learning the nature and structure of knowledge by reflecting on the scientific process and making knowledge much more explicit to learners during the practical work. This study aimed to assess pre-service science teachers" understanding some aspects of NOS by analyzing their reflections on the Vee diagrams constructed during the general biology laboratory course. In this single case study, elementary pre-service science teachers who cited mainly "the cell theory" in their Vee diagrams while building around the cell concepts were asked to participate in focus group reflective interviews. These interviews compared the patterns of the nature of scientific knowledge to the ways their constructed the cell related concepts. The content analysis of transcripts revealed that pre-service teachers gained a superficial understanding of history of scientific ideas in the development of the cell biology, not a deeper epistemological understanding in conceptualizing a contemporary understanding of the aspects of NOS. The emergent categories of naive understandings and misconceptions held by the participants were demonstrated and discussed in the light of NOS related literature.

Throughout the world standards have been developed for teaching in particular key learning areas. These standards also present benchmarks that can assist to measure and compare results from one year to the next. There appears to be no benchmarks for mentoring. An instrument devised to measure mentees' perceptions of their mentoring in primary science was administered to 304 preservice teachers in Turkey. Results indicated that the majority of mentees perceived they received mentoring practices, however, 20% or more claimed they had not received 24 of the 34 practices outlined on the researchbased survey. Establishing benchmarks for mentoring practices may assist educators to identify needs and developing programs that address these needs. This survey instrument can aid the identification of mentoring practices through the recipient's perspective for advancing mentoring, which may ultimately have an effect on improving teaching practices.