This study aims to examine the relationship between pre-service teachers' understanding of the Nature of Science (NOS), epistemic beliefs (EB), and pseudoscientific beliefs (PSB), and whether there is a difference between pre-service teachers' understanding of NOS and pseudoscientific beliefs with sophisticated and naive epistemological beliefs.…

The paper aims to provide a review of literature that emphasizes students' and teachers' views on the nature of science (NOS) and associated instructional approaches to develop adequate understanding of the NOS that have been employed in different contexts. One hundred and seventy-two (172) studies were selected from ResearchGate, Academia, Google…

We argue that teleological thinking plays a central role in biology and, more specifically, in theory of natural selection, and, therefore, the didactic goal cannot be its unnuanced elimination. In this sense, we will suggest that students' teleological views can be used as the starting point for the construction of knowledge in this area of…

Scientific objectivity and reliability are matters of fundamental importance both to science and in the public sphere, where they tend to be regarded with scepticism due to reporting of faulty or biased information, particularly in certain domains. In science studies, these qualities have been questioned in the light of two main characteristics of…

We argue for a virtue epistemological approach to the demarcation problem, for we think that such an approach makes sense from the perspective of an ameliorative epistemology. We argue that sustained and consistent pseudoscientific beliefs and attitudes call for an explanation in terms of underlying epistemic vices, and that remedying them calls…

The demarcation problem as one of the most prominent topics in the philosophy of science deserves a higher profile in science education literature as a part of the discussions about the instruction of the nature of science (NOS) concepts to generate a scientifically literate society. In this qualitative survey research study, the views of the…

How is knowledge pertaining to science best transferred to the public in order to bolster support for science-based policy and governance, thereby serving the common good? Herein lies a well-recognized challenge: widespread public support arguably requires a widespread understanding of science itself, but this is naturally undermined by the…

The vast majority of well-informed philosophers of science and scientists who are clearly (uncontroversially) scientists are able to extensionally differentiate between almost all scientific and non-scientific practices, disciplines, theories, attitudes, modes of procedure, etc., and do so or would do so in much the same way. This legitimately…

Studies consistently show the social impact of spreading epistemologically unfounded beliefs (or 'conspiracy beliefs'), including negative effects on public health. The present study identified correlations among epistemologically unfounded beliefs, authoritarianism, and scientific literacy in a representative sample of 303 Slovak secondary school…

Recent reforms in science education have promoted students' understanding of how science works, including the methodological approaches used by scientists. Given that teachers are expected to teach and promote methodological pluralism, it is worth examining how teachers understand and view scientific methods, particularly when scientific methods…

Even though it is widely held that the theory of evolution is one of the pillars of the biological sciences, as we begin the third decade of the twenty-first century, it is alarming how little we know about science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors and non-STEM majors' misconceptions about evolution in countries such as…

The teaching of the phenomenon of radioactivity is considered a key ingredient in the path towards developing critical thinking skills in many secondary science education curricula. Despite being one of the basic concepts in general physics courses, the scientific teaching literature of the last 40 years reports a great deal of misconceptions and…

The aim of this article is to propose a didactical approach to establish appropriate relations between different kinds of chemical knowledge and explanations at the macro and the submicro level. Incorrectly moving between these two levels is regarded as the cause of many misconceptions in school chemistry, and several theoretical frameworks have…

Science denial has a long history of causing harm in contemporary society when ignored. Recent discussions of science denial suggest that correcting people's false beliefs rarely has an impact on eliminating the adherence to false beliefs and assumptions, which is called the backfire effect. This paper brings the backfire effect within the context…

During the COVID-19 pandemic, we are fighting not only the novel coronavirus, but also the "infodemic" induced by the pandemic. Therefore, it is urgent to explore approaches for enhancing individual immunity against science-related misinformation. We conducted a cross-sectional study to examine the relationship between public engagement…