The effective continuing professional development (CPD) programs primarily aim to have an impact on teachers' knowledge bases, beliefs, and views and their classroom practices, which rationally lead most of the researchers to investigate those changes on teachers primarily. Although neglected, the interrelationship between CPD programs and…

The aim of the study was to examine nature of science (NOS) views of science teachers in project schools in Turkey. The sub-research questions of the study targeted at the relationships between the teachers' views on NOS in terms of different demographic features of the participant teachers. The participants were composed of convenience sample of…

Background: Preschoolers' knowledge of the principle of static equilibrium is an important research focus for understanding children's science content knowledge. Hitherto studies have mainly used behavioural observation with small samples. Thus, extending these studies with a validated test instrument is desirable. Aims: The aim was to validate an…

Purpose: Awareness of the interaction between science, technology, society, and environment (STSE) is seen as important in life in the modern world. Therefore, the present study aimed to examine the science teacher candidates' views on relations between science, technology, society, and environment. Research Methods: In this research, which used…

In England, both Religious Education (RE) and science are mandatory parts of the school curriculum throughout the 5-16 age range. Nevertheless, there remain concerns that, as in many countries, students do not have a good understanding about the scope of each subject nor about how the two subjects relate. This article reports on a study that…

The purpose of this study is to explore the strength of relationships between 7th grade students' Scientific Process Skills (SPS), Nature of Science (NOS) beliefs, and Scientific Creativity (SC) through Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). For this purpose, data were collected from 332 students of two public middle school students in Turkey. SPS,…

A non-experimental descriptive and correlational design was used to examine the "notion of the nature of scientific model, atom achievement and correlation between the two" held by a total sample of 76 prospective science teachers. "Students' Understanding of Models in Science" scale was utilized to evaluate the views of the…

Despite the importance of the theory of evolution (TE) to scientific knowledge, a number of misconceptions continue to be found among biology teachers. In this context, the first objective of this study was to identify the impact of professional development programme (PDP) on teachers' understanding of nature of science (NOS) and evolution and on…

Besides viewing knowledge about the nature of science (NOS) as important for its own value with respect to scientific literacy, an adequate understanding of NOS is expected to improve science content learning by fostering the ability to interrelate scientific concepts and, thus, coherently acquire scientific content knowledge. However, there is a…

Despite the relevance of nature of science and scientific models in science education, studies reveal that students do not possess adequate views regarding these topics. Bearing in mind that both teachers' views and knowledge strongly influence students' educational experiences, the main scope of this study was to evaluate Portuguese prospective…

Background: Although teaching nature of science (NOS) has been continually emphasized in many major reform efforts in science education, researchers claim that students do not possess adequate views of NOS. Insufficient understanding of NOS can be associated with the ineffectiveness of curricular or instructional approaches. Consequently,…

In this study, we explored the factors related to acceptance of evolutionary theory among students/preservice preschool education teachers using conceptual ecology for biological evolution as a theoretical frame. We aimed to examine the acceptance and understanding of evolutionary theory and also the relationship of acceptance and understanding of…

Informed understandings of nature of science and scientific inquiry are generally accepted goals of biology education. This article points out central features of scientific inquiry with relation to biology and the nature of science in general terms and focuses on the relationship of students' inquiry skills in biology and their beliefs on the…

In order to educate elementary students scientifically literate as expected in the science curricula in many countries around the world, science teachers need to be equipped with the diverse aspects of scientific literacy. This study investigates whether pre-service elementary science teachers at universities in Turkey have a satisfactory level of…

This article reports on the results of a paper-pen questionnaire study involving certain key aspects of the nature of science. The questionnaire covers, among other things, aspects such as uniqueness of the scientific method, objectivity of scientific data, and immutability of scientific laws. The survey was given out to eighty trainee teachers…