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This study aims to examine the effect of Science-Technology-Society (STS) learning unit on the Work and Energy topic in developing grade 10 students’ scientific argumentation. The research participants were 20 grade 10 students at one secondary school located in Khon Kaen province, the Northeastern region of Thailand. The students’ tasks, discourse and informal interview were collected and interpreted according to the Toulmin’s Argument Pattern (TAP) framework. The findings revealed that the STS learning unit on Work and Energy could promote the participating students’ scientific argumentation. That is, the students could generate more quality and effective scientific argumentation according to the TAP framework. There was a high number of quality scientific argumentation regarding Warrants, Qualifiers and Backing especially in the Decision Making and Socialization stages of STS approach. Also, the students normally applied their scientific understanding in creating their Grounds. The implication of this study in designing the appropriate STS workshop for training in-service science teachers to be able to understand about the STS approach and how to apply the STS approach in helping their students develop scientific argumentation.

Science teachers need an adequate understanding of nature of science (NOS) and the ability to embed NOS in their teaching. This collective case study aims to explore in-service science teachers' conceptions of NOS and the embeddedness of NOS in their teaching about astronomy and space. Three science teachers participated in this study. All participants attended the NOS workshop based on an explicit-reflective approach. They were asked to respond to the Myths of Science Questionnaire on three different occasions, i.e., at the beginning and the end of the NOS workshop and a semester after the workshop. Classroom observation, interviews after teaching, and a collection of related documents were also employed to collect data. The data were analyzed using a constant comparative method. The results revealed two important assertions. First, science teachers' conceptions of NOS are stable and resistant to change. However, an explicit-reflective approach employed in the NOS workshop, to some extent, promoted science teachers' understanding and reasoning about NOS. Second, science teachers' conceptions of NOS are not directly related to their classroom practices. With different degrees of NOS understanding, all participants taught NOS implicitly and missed most of the opportunities to address aspects of NOS embedded in the topics they taught. The implications of these findings are also discussed.

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