The study explored the changes in pre-service science teachers’ understanding of the nature of science and their opinions about the nature of science, science teaching and argumentation after their participation in explicit nature of science and socioscientific argumentation processes. The participants were 56 third-grade pre-service science teachers studying in a state university in Turkey. The treatment group comprised 27 participants, and there were 29 participants in the comparison group. The comparison group participants were involved in a student-centred science-teaching process, and (...) the participants of the treatment group were involved in explicit NOS and socioscientific argumentation processes. In the study, which lasted a total of 11 weeks, a NOS-as-argumentation questionnaire was administered to all the participants to determine their understanding of NOS at the beginning and end of the data collection process, and six random participants of the treatment group participated in semi-structured interview questions in order to further understand their views regarding NOS, science teaching and argumentation. Qualitative and quantitative data analysis revealed that the explicit NOS and socioscientific argumentation processes had a significant effect on pre-service science teachers’ NOS understandings. Furthermore, NOS, argumentation and science teaching views of the participants in the treatment group showed a positive change. The results of this study are discussed in light of the related literature, and suggestions are made within the context of contribution to science-teaching literature, improvement of education quality and education of pre-service teachers. (shrink)

The biggest challenges facing science education have possibly been accessibility and relevance to its target audiences—challenges that have become more pronounced with the increasingly multicultural nature of teaching and learning environments. How does one render accessible a field of inquiry that has often been viewed as unnatural, difficult, or the intellectual playground of a select few? How does one instil in students a sense of relevance of science to their own lives and experiences, especially as science has its own culture (...) with a special language, traditions, conventions, beliefs, and values; and if teaching and learning take place in a language and culture other than their home language and culture; and if it does not seem to engage, respect, and honour their prior knowledge, past experiences, and cultural perspectives? Recent decades have seen various approaches to multicultural education, the transformation of science education, and the learning of scientific knowledge, concepts, and practices in non-Western or indigenous societies. Chief among these approaches are the drives toward indigenisation, on the one hand and toward internationalisation, on the other. After reflecting on lessons from Africa regarding the debates around Africanisation and globalisation, we examine the idea of Transkulturalität[transculturality]—as contrasted with multiculturality and interculturality. (shrink)

The central aim of science is to make sense of the world. To move forward as a community endeavor, sense-making must be systematic and focused. The question then is how do scientists actually experience the sense-making process? In this chapter we examine the “practice turn” in science studies and in particular how as a result of this turn scholars have come to realize that models are the “functional unit” of scientific thought and form the center of the reasoning/sense-making process. This (...) chapter will explore a context-dependent view of models and modeling in science. From this analysis we present a framework for delineating the different aspects of model-based reasoning and describe how this view can be useful in educational settings. This framework highlights how modeling supports and focuses scientific practice on sense-making. (shrink)

Argumentation, and the production of scientific arguments are critical elements of inquiry that are necessary for helping students become scientifically literate through engaging them in constructing and critiquing ideas. This case study employed a mixed methods research design to examine the development in 5th grade students’ practices of oral and written argumentation from one unit to another over 16 weeks utilizing the science writing heuristic approach. Data sources included five rounds of whole-class discussion focused on group presentations of arguments that (...) occurred over eleven class periods; students’ group writings; interviews with six target students and the teacher; and the researcher’s field notes. The results revealed five salient trends in students’ development of oral and written argumentative practices over time: Students came to use more critique components as they participated in more rounds of whole-class discussion focused on group presentations of arguments; by challenging each other’s arguments, students came to focus on the coherence of the argument and the quality of evidence; students came to use evidence to defend, support, and reject arguments; the quality of students’ writing continuously improved over time; and students connected oral argument skills to written argument skills as they had opportunities to revise their writing after debating and developed awareness of the usefulness of critique from peers. Given the development in oral argumentative practices and the quality of written arguments over time, this study indicates that students’ development of oral and written argumentative practices is positively related to each other. This study suggests that argumentative practices should be framed through both a social and epistemic understanding of argument-utilizing talk and writing as vehicles to create norms of these complex practices. (shrink)

The ability to develop and use models to explain phenomena is a key component of the Next Generation Science Standards, and without examples of what modeling instruction looks like in the reality of classrooms, it will be difficult for us as a field to understand how to move forward in designing curricula that foreground the practice in ways that align with the epistemic commitments of modeling. In this article, we illustrate examples drawn from a model-based curriculum development project to problematize (...) and bring to the fore issues and tensions we observed through the course of modeling instruction. In doing so, we argue that instruction that is model-based may not be actualizing modeling as an epistemic practice to support student sensemaking. We suggest that this kind of enactment may be a result of the tensions between viewing models as content to be learned and modeling as a scientific practice in which the end products are not known ahead of time. We discuss the implications of our analysis for teacher learning and curriculum development. (shrink)

The inclusion of the practice of “developing and using models” in the Framework for K-12 Science Education and in the Next Generation Science Standards provides an opportunity for educators to examine the role this practice plays in science and how it can be leveraged in a science classroom. Drawing on conceptions of models in the philosophy of science, we bring forward an agent-based account of models and discuss the implications of this view for enacting modeling in science classrooms. Models, according (...) to this account, can only be understood with respect to the aims and intentions of a cognitive agent, not solely in terms of how they represent phenomena in the world. We present this contrast as a heuristic—models of versus models for—that can be used to help educators notice and interpret how models are positioned in standards, curriculum, and classrooms. (shrink)

In this article, the argument is put forth that controversies about the scope and limits of science should be considered in Nature of Science teaching. Reference disciplines for teaching NOS are disciplines, which reflect upon science, like philosophy of science, history of science, and sociology of science. The culture of these disciplines is characterized by controversy rather than unified textbook knowledge. There is common agreement among educators of the arts and humanities that controversies in the reference disciplines should be represented (...) in education. To teach NOS means to adopt a reflexive perspective on science. Therefore, we suggest that controversies within and between the reference disciplines are relevant for NOS teaching and not only the NOS but about NOS should be taught, too. We address the objections that teaching about NOS is irrelevant for real life and too demanding for students. First, we argue that science-reflexive meta-discourses are relevant for students as future citizens because the discourses occur publicly in the context of sociopolitical disputes. Second, we argue that it is in fact necessary to reduce the complexity of the above-mentioned discourses and that this is indeed possible, as it has been done with other reflexive elements in science education. In analogy to the German construct Bewertungskompetenz, we suggest epistemic competency as a goal for NOS teaching. In order to do so, science-reflexive controversies must be simplified and attitudes toward science must be considered. Discourse on the scientific status of potential pseudoscience may serve as an authentic and relevant context for teaching the controversial nature of reflexion on science. (shrink)