Improving Science Teachers' Conceptions of Nature of Science: A Critical Review of the Literature.

TLDR: In this paper, the authors aimed to review and assess the effectiveness of the attempts undertaken to improve prospective and practising science teachers' conceptions of nature of science (NOS) by using science process-skills instruction or engagement in science-based inquiry activities.

Abstract: This paper aimed to review, and assess the 'effectiveness' of the attempts undertaken to improve prospective and practising science teachers' conceptions of nature of science (NOS). The reviewed attempts could be categorized into two general approches: implicit and explicit. Implicit attempts utilized science process-skills instruction or engagement in science-based inquiry activities to improve science teachers' conceptions of NOS. To achieve the same goal, explicit attempts used instruction geared towards various aspects of NOS and/or instruction that utilized elements from history and philosophy of science. To the extent that teachers' NOS conceptions were faithfully assessed by the instruments used in the reviewed studies, the explicit approach was relatively more effective in enhancing teachers' views. The relative ineffectiveness of the implicit approach could be attributed to two inherent assumptions. The first is that developing an understanding of NOS is an 'affective', as compared to a 'cognitiv...