Teaching nature of science within a controversial topic: Integrated versus nonintegrated

Abstract

This study investigated the influence of two different explicit instructional approaches in promoting more informed understandings of nature of science (NOS) among students. Participants, a total of 42 students, comprised two groups in two intact sections of ninth grade. Participants in the two groups were taught environmental science by their regular classroom teacher, with the difference being the context in which NOS was explicitly taught. For the “integrated” group, NOS instruction was related to the science content about global warming. For the “nonintegrated” group, NOS was taught through a set of activities that specifically addressed NOS issues and were dispersed across the content about global warming. The treatment for both groups spanned 6 weeks and addressed a unit about global warming and NOS. An open‐ended questionnaire, in conjunction with semistructured interviews, was used to assess students' views before and after instruction. Results showed improvements in participants' views of NOS regardless of whether NOS was integrated within the regular content about global warming. Comparison of differences between the two groups showed “slightly” greater improvement in the informed views of the integrated group participants. On the other hand, there was greater improvement in the transitional views of the nonintegrated group participants. Therefore, the overall results did not provide any conclusive evidence in favor of one approach over the other. Implications on the teaching and learning of NOS are discussed. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 43: 395–418, 2006

‘Should We Kill the Grey Squirrels?’ A Study Exploring Students’ Justifications and Decision-Making

“…This idea is in line with Zeidler's (1997) (Zeidler, Sadler, Simmons & Howes, 2005). Studies in science education have shown (a) that there is a gain in the learning of content knowledge as a result of engaging in a consideration of SSI (Applebaum, Barker & Pinzino, 2006;Pedretti, 2003;Zohar & Nemet, 2002); (b) that SSI can serve as an effective context to help students understand the nature of science (Khishfe & Lederman, 2006) since amongst others it is through this process the students understand that some science is tentative, and there is ambiguity even in some scientific knowledge; (c) SSI can help students find links between science and society, and can be used as a way to develop citizenship; and (d) there is evidence that SSI can enthuse students and drive them into discussions around scientific issues (Levinson, 2008).…”

Contextualization of Nature of Science Within the Socioscientific Issues Framework: A Review of Research

“…Research has consistently shown that typically students have naive understandings of NOS (Khishfe & Lederman, 2006). A possible explanation for this failure might be due to the underlying assumption that students would learn the nature of science automatically as a result of studying science and engaging in inquiry activities (Abd-El Khalick and Lederman, 2000a).…”

“…Previous research has suggested that the explicit attention to various aspects of NOS and the emphasis on students" perceptions of NOS are relatively more effective in improving students" and teachers" conceptions of NOS than an implicit approach that relies on the implicit diffusion of NOS concepts though hands-on or inquiry-oriented instruction (Abd-El-Khalick & Lederman, 2000b). Khishfe and Lederman (2006) argued that explicit approach is relatively more effective in improving students" and teachers" understandings of NOS than an implicit approach. However, the explicit approach was not a panacea to produce students "informed" in robust ways about NOS.…”

“…Much is still desired, as the integration of the explicit approach has met with limited success. This failure is attributed to the context in which NOS has been explicitly taught (Khishfe & Lederman, 2006). Thus, it is important to seek the alternative context for NOS to promote better understandings.…”

“…Science educators (Khishfe, 2012;Khishfe, & Lederman, 2006;Sadler et al, 2004;Walker, & Zeidler, 2007;Zeidler, et al, 2002) have aimed to identify and explore specific aspects of the relationship between NOS and SSI by addressing NOS components (tentativeness, creativity, subjectivity, theory and law, observation and inference, social, cultural embeddedness, empirical nature of science) in the context of multiple ill-structured problems such as global warming, genetically modified foods, animal rights, and water fluoridation in their research. Findings of this research confirmed that SSI provides an excellent context for explicit NOS instruction by highlighting conflicting evidence, different interpretations of data, and encouraging alternative perspectives of positions as well as solutions to issues.…”