The study examined preservice teachers' development in conceptions of NOS and their argumentation components using an explicit approach that targets NOS and argumentation. Participants were 20 preservice elementary teachers enrolled in a science methods course emphasizing explicit instruction of NOS and argumentation through various hands-on…

Fostering students' scientific literacy is a key goal of science education, with understanding the nature of scientific inquiry (NOSI) as a central component. Achieving this goal requires teachers to possess adequate knowledge in this area. However, assessments indicate that pre-service science teachers (PSTs) have not yet developed comprehensive…

Science reform efforts over the years have addressed the need to make science engaging and accessible for all learners. These efforts attend to multiple aspects of science teaching and learning, including, but not limited to, more intentional focus on teaching students about the nature of science, as well as increased use of Culturally Relevant…

Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education plays an important role in teaching and learning for the 21st century. Science teacher education is making great efforts to prepare STEM teachers for modern classroom practice and enable them to adapt their STEM knowledge and practices to the needs of students' contexts. However,…

Science appears to be coming under increasing pressure in parts of society and the media, with an increase of 'fake news' and less regard for 'experts'. If this is to be combatted it is important that students develop a good understanding of both the big conceptual ideas of science and the nature of science itself. However, the nature of science…

The need for scientifically literate citizens is an urgent priority, exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020. Despite the importance of scientific literacy, elementary schools across the nation have not made science instruction a priority in their school day. On average, elementary students spend 40% less instructional time in science…

The aim of the study is to investigate the attitudes of prospective science teachers towards the use of problem-based learning methods in the learning of concepts related to the subject of solids, and their opinions on its role in academic success, science process skills and the chemistry course. The study group consists of 83 prospective teachers…

The purpose of this study was to explore school science teachers' and their students' perceptions of science and scientists. The participants included 116 in-service middle school chemistry teachers who attended a training program at the Faculty of Education, Lebanese University, and 250 of their students, randomly selected from a larger sample of…

This article discusses how to deal with the relations between different cultural perspectives in classrooms, based on a proposal for considering understanding and knowledge as goals of science education, inspired by Dewey's naturalistic humanism. It thus combines educational and philosophical interests. In educational terms, our concerns relate to…

For the successful implementation of educational reforms that aim to get students to be active learners, it has to be realized that teachers are the actual determiners of the classroom curriculum. Therefore, teachers who are in the position of the administrators of these reforms should get support and develop positive beliefs about the…

Elementary school teachers are commonly known to have low self-efficacy in mathematics and science. Previously conducted research on science teaching self-efficacy and content knowledge has often focused on whether methods courses, professional development or other interventions improve both self-efficacy and content knowledge among elementary…

Background: This study describes how teachers' nature of science (NOS) views changed throughout an innovative Continuing Professional Development (CPD) program that provided sustained support throughout the process in a collaborative and reflective environment and activities that are consistent with the current curriculum and NOS tenets integrated…

This study investigated the conceptions of the nature of science held by pre-service undergraduate biology teachers in South-West, Nigeria. Specifically, the study examined the influence of their gender on their conceptions of the nature of science. The study was a descriptive research of the survey method. The population for the study comprised…

The purpose of this study was to investigate preservice science teachers' conceptual understanding of astronomy concepts. Qualitative research methods were used. The sample consists of 118 preservice science teachers (40 freshmen, 31 sophomores, and 47 juniors). The data were collected with Astronomy Conceptual Questionnaire (ACQ) that includes 13…

The authors find justification for integrating science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) in the complex problems that today's students will face as tomorrow's STEM professionals. Teachers with individual subject-area specialties in the STEM content areas have limited experience in integrating STEM. In this study, the authors…