Incorporating nature of science into initial  science teacher education

A central component of scientific literacy is having an adequate understanding of the ‘Nature of Science’. Developing NOS understanding is one of the most commonly stated objectives for science education. The importance of this objective has recently been addressed in the reform of the Irish Junior Cycle (middle school) Science curriculum, where ‘Nature of Science’ (NOS) is an overarching feature of all teaching and learning in the Science specification. Addressing NOS is now a key concern for initial teacher education (ITE) programmes in Ireland, as it will be pivotal to its successful incorporation in the science classroom.

To tackle these reforms in ITE, workshops were designed to introduce pre-service teachers (PSTs) to NOS ideas, such as methods, practices and social institutional aspects. The study was theoretically underpinned by an NOS model by Erduran and Dagher, entitled the Reconceptualised Family Resemblance Approach to Nature of  Science (RFN). This meta-perspective NOS model is open to transformation and presents a realistic view of science. This study examines how PSTs used ideas and concepts from the RFN workshops and investigated how participation influenced their lesson planning and NOS assessment development skills. The development of their teacher knowledge was underpinned by Gess-newsome’s framework Teacher Professional Knowledge Bases (TPKB) and Zohar’s Meta-Strategic Knowledge (MSK) framework. 

Case study research design was implemented, where four cases were identified to inform how PSTs responded to the NOS professional development. Data collection involved pre, post and delayed-post survey data, audio recordings of the workshops and workshop material, interviews, lesson observations and lesson plans gathered from PSTs. In the process of analysis, interview transcripts, surveys and audio recordings were coded, and themes were extracted inductively and deductively.

Findings from the study suggest that the RFN framework was useful for improving and maintaining the PSTs NOS understanding. This NOS meta-perspective lens has the potential to provide PSTs with the skills to examine science explicitly and draw attention to NOS in their lessons. Several themes emerged around the study, these include the PSTs positive reports regarding participation in the workshops and how involvement increased their confidence to teach NOS prior to, and during teaching practice. Other themes emerged that present how the PSTs had difficulty with integrating NOS into their lesson planning and consequently explicit use of NOS in their lessons and instructional material developed was limited. They presented to have misconceptions and missed opportunities with regard to NOS pedagogies, and presented contrasts between their beliefs and practice. Certain external, internal and personal barriers were also found to hinder their NOS lesson incorporation NOS. These barriers were as a result of the political climate at the time and certain novice teacher issues. 

This thesis depicts innovative research that reflects a realistic approach to incorporating NOS education into ITE programmes. This study opens up discussions around the benefits of a professional development programme that moves away from presenting mere tenets, to one that presents NOS from cognitive-epistemic and social institutional perspectives.