A Socioscientific Curriculum Facilitating the Development of Distal and Proximal NOS Conceptualizations

Nature of Science in the Science Curriculum: Origin, Development, Implications and Shifting Emphases

“…The natural language of science is a synergistic integration of words, diagrams, pictures, graphs, maps, equations, tables, charts, and other forms of visual mathematical expression. (Lemke 1998 , p. 3) Because much of the information needed to address SSI is of the science-in-themaking kind, rather than a well-established science, and may even be located at or near the cutting edge of research, it is unlikely that students will be able to locate it 26 See also Eastwood and colleagues ( 2012 ), Ekborg and colleagues ( 2012 ), Khishfe ( 2012b ), Lee ( 2012 ), Lee and Grace ( 2012 ), Nielsen ( 2012b ), Robottom ( 2012 ), Sadler ( 2009Sadler ( , 2011, Sadler and Donnelly ( 2006 ), Sadler and Zeidler ( 2005a , b ), Sadler and colleagues ( 2004Sadler and colleagues ( , 2006Sadler and colleagues ( , 2007, Schalk ( 2012 ), Tytler ( 2012 ), Wu and Tsai ( 2007 ), Zeidler and Sadler ( 2008a , b ), Zeidler and Schafer ( 1984 ), and Zeidler and colleagues ( 2003Zeidler and colleagues ( , 2005Zeidler and colleagues ( , 2009 in traditional sources of information like textbooks and reference books. It will need to be accessed from academic journals, magazines, newspapers, TV and radio broadcasts, publications of special interest groups and the Internet, thus raising important issues of media literacy .…”

“…26 Robust understanding of NOS is a clear prerequisite for addressing SSI critically and systematically; importantly, enhanced NOS understanding (both distal and proximal ) is also a signifi cant learning outcome of an SSI-oriented approach (Schalk 2012 ).…”

Instruction Matters for Nature of Science Understanding in College Biology Laboratories

“…This may be fostered by incorporating discussions of socioscientific issues (Schalk 2012), metacognitive prompts (Peters and BCitsantas 2010), or argumentation instruction (McDonald 2010) into the curriculum and having faculty members and TAs form communities of practice to support NOS instruction (Akerson et al 2012). However, instructors will have to choose a pedagogy that matches the NOS learning objective, perhaps selecting an expository laboratory for some NOS aspects and an inquiry-based one for others in order to maximize content, process, and NOS learning in the students.…”

Social and Rational: The Presentation of Nature of Science and the Uptake of Change in Evolution Textbooks

“…Science majors at a midwestern U.S. university were unable to articulate the influence of values on science (Fuselier & Jackson, ). However, students who completed a course that explicitly related SSI to microbiology exhibited a deeper understanding of some aspects of NOS (Schalk, ). In a study that compared SSI‐based and strictly content‐based science instruction in secondary school, students who experienced the SSI‐contextualized lessons had a more nuanced understanding of NOS than students with the content‐based instruction (Eastwood et al., ).…”