This study explores book talks as an approach to teaching Nature of Science (NOS) to young children (4-6 years old). To teach about NOS means to, in one way or another, focus on the processes, humans that build science knowledge, as well as the characteristics and limits of scientific knowledge. Previous research in this area has studied the…

Previous research about the presence of nature of science (NOS) within science textbooks has been found to be lacking in sufficient coverage. However, given the shift in how scholars conceive of NOS, the shortcomings may not be present in the textbooks but rather in the NOS frameworks used to analyze textbooks. Whereas traditional NOS has taken a…

Argumentation constitutes an important element in nature of science education. However, its virtues and scope can be overstated. Here, we survey in detail the place of argumentation in science education. Our benchmark is the range of epistemic processes relevant to citizens and consumers as they assess the reliability of scientific claims in…

As the vision in "A Framework for K-12 Science Education" and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) takes hold in schools and classrooms, there is an urgent need for teacher professional development (PD) programs that align with NGSS-designed curriculum materials and address the unique strengths and needs of diverse student…

Quantum physics challenges our views of the physical world and describes phenomena that cannot be directly observed. The use of language is hence essential in the teaching of quantum physics. With a sociocultural view of learning, we investigate characteristics of preuniversity students' small-group discussions and their potential for enhancing…

This paper is concerned with the conceptualization of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) for teaching about the nature of science. In contrast to the view that science teachers need to develop a specific "PCK for nature of science," an alternative, more comprehensive notion of PCK for science teaching is suggested. The point of…

The aim of this study is to advance current understanding of the transactional processes that characterize students' sense-making practices when they are confronted with multiple representations of scientific phenomena. Data for the study are derived from a design experiment that involves a technology-rich, inquiry-based sequence of…

Various features of scientific discourse have been characterized in the science education literature, and challenges students face in appropriating these features have been explored. Using the framework of conceptual metaphor, this paper sought to identify explicit and implicit metaphors in pedagogical texts dealing with the concept of entropy and…

This study investigated how student participation in an authentic scientific investigation may shape underrepresented students' views of science and support students in learning science. The research centered on the instructional approach used in a fifth-grade classroom to engage English language learning students from Latino backgrounds in a…

This study explores how elementary teachers and students use hedges (tentative words such as "maybe") and boosters (expressions of certainty such as "clearly" and "obviously") during science inquiry discussions. Drawing upon semiotic theory, we examine explicit thematic patterns (semantic meaning relations among science concepts) as well as hidden…

Error in science is a prime occasion to teach the nature of science, especially the central feature of tentativeness. Error types also reflect corresponding methodologies of science, critical for practicing science and (in a context of scientific literacy) analyzing its claims. Effective efforts in teaching about error will ideally be informed by…

I profile here a prospective method for assessing nature of science (NOS) knowledge, as an alternative to VNOS and similar approaches. Questions about cases in contemporary news and from history probe scientific literacy in context. Scoring targets how "well informed" the analysis is, based on identifying relevant NOS information and interpreting…

For many decades, science educators have asked, "In what ways should learning the content of traditional subjects serve as the means to more general ends, such as understanding the nature of science or the processes of scientific inquiry?" Acceptance of these ends reduces the role of disciplinary context; the "Footprints Puzzle" and Oregon's…

The goal of this case study was to describe characteristic features of abductive inquiry learning activities in the domain of earth science. Participants were undergraduate junior and senior students who were enrolled in an earth science education course offered for preservice secondary science teachers at a university in Korea. The undergraduate…

Teaching nature of science (NOS) is beginning to take root in science education in China. This exploratory study interviewed 24 science teacher educators from economically developed parts of China about their conceptions of teaching NOS to prospective science teachers. Five key dimensions emerged from the data. This paper focuses on the dimension…