Teaching the Nature of Science as an Element of Science, Technology and Society

Spector, Barbara S.; Strong, Paschal N.; Porta, Thomas La

doi:10.1007/0-306-47215-5_17

Cited by 18 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 1 publication

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“…The differences between girls' and boys' scores could depend on the difference between the interpretation of empirical evidences, usage of scientific method, perspectives to science and background experiences. Also Spector, Strong and La Porta (2002) defines pseudoscience as an outgrowth of the human characteristic called, "safety seeking". This could also be another reason between girls and boys scores considering their age group properties.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Elementary school students’ perceptions about nature of scientific knowledge and some pseudoscientific ideas

2016

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In early childhood, people develop some beliefs that can affect the whole lives. Developing pseudoscientific beliefs can cause differences on child's nature of scientific knowledge. Giving importance on prevent gaining pseudoscientific knowledge may help qualified lifelong learning abilities. In this study, it was aimed to investigate the elementary school students' nature of scientific knowledge and views about some common pseudoscientific ideas. Also some variables' impacts on data collection tool scores were searched, too. The study was conducted on 2014-2015 educational year with 5 th , 6 th , 7 th and 8 th grade elementary school students. In the study, Nature of Scientific Knowledge Scale (NSKS) and eight statements were used to collect data. The aim of these eight statements was to figure out students' pseudoscientific ideas about evolution and nature of science. SPSS 20.00 programme was used to analyze data. It was found that girls' total scale scores were found higher than boys' total scores. Girls' amoral, parsimonious, testable and unified sub-dimension scores were also found higher than boys' scores. 7 th grade students showed higher total scale scores than the other grade students. Also, it was seen that 7 th grade students have more sophisticated knowledge about evolution than the nature of science features. At the end of the study the findings were discussed according to literature and some suggestions were given.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Elementary school students’ perceptions about nature of scientific knowledge and some pseudoscientific ideas

2016

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“…Teacher education programs can play a critical role in helping prospective teachers understand and teach about STSE education (Matthews 1998;Spector et al 1998), and so address the theory/practice gap. Aware of the PROMOTING ISSUES-BASED STSE PERSPECTIVES growing interest in the use of multimedia case methods for the purposes of teacher education (Koballa & Tippins 2000;Bencze et al 2001Bencze et al , 2003Hewitt et al 2003;Brophy 2004;Wong 2006), we constructed an interactive video-based case method to illustrate (and study) the development and implementation of issues-based STSE instruction in a science classroom.…”

Section: Multimedia Case Methods In Teacher Educationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Promoting Issues-based STSE Perspectives in Science Teacher Education: Problems of Identity and Ideology

et al. 2006

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Although science, technology, society and environment (STSE) education has gained considerable force in the past few years, it has made fewer strides in practice. We suggest that science teacher identity plays a role in the adoption of STSE perspectives. Simply put, issues-based STSE education challenges traditional images of a science teacher and science instructional ideologies. In this paper, we briefly describe the development of a multimedia documentary depicting issues-based STSE education in a teacher's class and its subsequent implementation with 64 secondary student-teachers at a large Canadian university. Specifically, we set out to explore: (1) science teacher candidates' responses to a case of issues-based STSE teaching, and (2) how science teacher identity intersects with the adoption of STSE perspectives. Findings reveal that although teacher candidates expressed confidence and motivation regarding teaching STSE, they also indicated decreased likelihood to teach these perspectives in their early years of teaching. Particular tensions or problems of practice consistently emerged that helped explain this paradox -including issues related to: control and autonomy; support and belonging; expertise and negotiating curriculum; politicization and action; and biases and ideological bents. We conclude our paper with a discussion regarding the lessons learned about STSE education, teacher identity and the role of multimedia case methods.

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“…The socioscientific issues have been put forward as an optimum medium for NOS instruction (e.g. Bentley & Fleury, 1998;Sadler et al, 2002;Spector et al, 1998). Therefore, we propose that the transfer of participants' NOS understandings might have occurred because the contexts of NOS instruction and the new applications were socioscientific, as compared with scientific.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 93%

“…Socioscientific issues refer to social science-based problems that are open-ended, ill-structured, and debatable (Kolsto, 2001;Sadler & Zeidler, 2005;Zeidler, 2003), such as global warming, genetically modified food, and cloning. The underlying principle for utilizing them as a context for NOS seems to be that students would be engaged with real data use and interpretation, which would offer a favorable naturalistic milieu for promoting their understandings of NOS (Bentley & Fleury, 1998;Matkins & Bell, 2007;Sadler, Chambers, & Zeidler, 2002;Spector, Strong, & La Porta, 1998).…”

Section: Nature Of Sciencementioning

confidence: 99%

Transfer of Nature of Science Understandings into Similar Contexts: Promises and Possibilities of an Explicit Reflective Approach

Khishfe

2013

International Journal of Science Education

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The purpose of this study was to (a) investigate the effectiveness of explicit nature of science (NOS) instruction in the context of controversial socioscientific issues and (b) explore whether the transfer of acquired NOS understandings, which were explicitly taught in the context of one socioscientific context, into other similar contexts (familiar and unfamiliar) was possible. Participants were 10th grade students in two intact sections at one high school. The treatment involved teaching a sixweek unit about genetic engineering. For one group (non-NOS group), there was no explicit instruction about NOS. For the other group (NOS group), explicit instruction about three NOS aspects (subjective, empirical, and tentative) was dispersed across the genetic engineering unit. A questionnaire including two open-ended scenarios, in conjunction with semi-structured interviews, was used to assess the change in participants' understandings of NOS and their ability to transfer their acquired understandings into similar contexts. The first scenario involved a familiar context about genetically modified food and the second one focused on an unfamiliar context about water fluoridation. Results showed no improvement in NOS understandings of participants in the non-NOS group in relation to the familiar and unfamiliar contexts. On the other hand, there was a general improvement in the NOS understandings of participants in the NOS group in relation to both the familiar and unfamiliar contexts. Implications about the transfer of participants' acquired NOS understandings on the basis of the distance between the context of learning and that of application are highlighted and discussed in link with the classroom learning environment.

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Teaching the Nature of Science as an Element of Science, Technology and Society

Cited by 18 publications

References 1 publication

Elementary school students’ perceptions about nature of scientific knowledge and some pseudoscientific ideas

Elementary school students’ perceptions about nature of scientific knowledge and some pseudoscientific ideas

Promoting Issues-based STSE Perspectives in Science Teacher Education: Problems of Identity and Ideology

Transfer of Nature of Science Understandings into Similar Contexts: Promises and Possibilities of an Explicit Reflective Approach

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