Nine years after reconceptualizing the nature of science for science education using the family resemblance approach (FRA) (Erduran & Dagher, 2014a), the time is ripe for taking stock of what this approach has accomplished, and what future research it can facilitate. This reflective paper aims to accomplish three goals. The first addresses…

Research indicates that teachers lack a sophisticated understanding of Nature of Science (NOS), which in turn, can impact their instructional decisions and students' understanding of NOS. The aim of the study was to investigate United Arab Emirates (UAE) early years' science teacher's (N = 433) perceptions about the NOS. Results obtained from a…

The goal of this study was to examine the way preservice science teachers depict and develop their understanding of nature of science (NOS), from the perspective of the family resemblance approach (FRA). FRA defines NOS as a Cognitive-Epistemic and Social-Institutional system. Appling the dual-analytic approach via reflective drawing analysis, we…

Understanding the nature of science (NOS) has emerged as a core curricular goal since at least the 1960s. While science education reforms around the world have shed light on various epistemic and social underpinnings of science, how science curriculum documents portray the nature of other related disciplines such as mathematics and engineering has…

There is substantial body of literature in science education focusing on students' understanding of the theory of evolution by natural selection. However, despite decades of research on the evolution versus creationism debate there is still widespread concern that particular misconceptions about evolution persist. The study aimed to recalibrate…

A recent framework on nature of science (NOS) is the Family Resemblance Approach (FRA). FRA presents NOS as a cognitive-epistemic and social-institutional system with a set of categories: aims and values, scientific methods, scientific practices, scientific knowledge and social-institutional aspects of science. Although FRA has been problematised…

The purpose of this commentary on Hodson and Wong's (2017, this issue) article is to clarify the merits of the expanded family resemblance approach (FRA) to science education, briefly alluded to in their article, and to discuss the implications of this approach relative to the question of demarcation they raise. In clarifying the merits of the…

The article investigates how deliberative democracy is related to argumentation in school science. We use examples of political models of deliberative democracy to synthesize implications for argumentation in science teaching and learning. Some key questions guided our approach: How does democratic deliberation work and how does it relate to…

In this paper, we trace the work of some philosophers of chemistry to draw some implications for the improvement of chemical education. We examine some key features of chemical knowledge, and how these features are relevant for school chemistry teaching and learning. In particular, we examine Laszlo's ("Foundations of Chemistry"…

There exists bias among students that learning organic chemistry topics requires rote learning. In this paper, we address such bias through an organic chemistry activity designed to promote argumentation. We investigated how pre-service science teachers engage in an argumentation about conformational analysis. Analysis of the outcomes concentrated…

Background: The use of visual representations (i.e., photographs, diagrams, models) has been part of science, and their use makes it possible for scientists to interact with and represent complex phenomena, not observable in other ways. Despite a wealth of research in science education on visual representations, the emphasis of such research has…

The Irish national discourse on curriculum and assessment reform at the Junior Cycle level has been fraught with controversy in the past two years. The introduction of the new curriculum and assessment framework in 2012 by the then Minister of Education, Ruairi Quinn has led to significant media coverage and teacher union response. In this paper,…

In argumentative discourse, there are two kinds of activity--dispute and deliberation--that depend on the argumentative task goal. In dispute the goal is to defend a conclusion by undermining alternatives, whereas in deliberation the goal is to arrive at a conclusion by contrasting alternatives. In this study, we examine the impact of these tasks…

The aim of this study was to investigate the kinds of argumentation schemes generated by pre-service elementary science teachers (PSTs) as they perform inquiry-oriented laboratory tasks, and to explore how argumentation schemes vary by task as well as by experimentation and discussion sessions. The model of argumentative and scientific inquiry was…

History and philosophy of science have been widely promoted in science teacher education for several decades. However the application of themes from philosophy of science in science teacher education has been rather broad and not particular relative to the domain-specific features of the science in question. The purpose of this paper is to…