Scientists and science educators have argued that learners (students, preservice teachers, and inservice teachers) should understand knowledge construction in science, in addition to figuring out disciplinary core ideas. Given this goal, some science education scholars created a construct called the "Nature of Science" (NOS), which aims…

In a sample of 323 engineering students, structural equation modeling was used to test hypothesized relationships between beliefs about the nature of knowledge in science, beliefs about the process of justification for knowing in science, and argumentative reasoning about an ill-structured social-scientific issue. Beliefs about justification for…

Scientific literacy not only involves scientific content relative to each branch of science, as a scientifically literate person is also aware of what science is, as well as how it operates in a broader and complex sense. Therefore, in order to develop and implement successful methodologies in the classroom aiming to improve students' scientific…

Whilst teaching about the nature of science (NOS) is a significant goal of science education, there remains debate about specifying the NOS and appropriate pedagogies and approaches to researching the NOS. A neglected, but conceptually and practically significant, problem is the proliferation of NOS-related learning goals such as NOS beliefs,…

We investigate learning difficulties among second-year students in electromagnetism courses when they apply Ampère-Maxwell's law. Using phenomenography, we analyzed written answers from 65 undergraduate physics students to four questions on Ampère's and Ampère-Maxwell's laws. We complemented our research by interviewing 12 students. To design the…

Social realist theorising about curriculum and social justice in higher education has emphasised the importance of providing equity of epistemic access to powerful knowledge. However, there has been little discussion about what constitutes powerful knowledge and how students can use it for social good. In the science disciplines, the traditional…

There is often a steady trajectory of curriculum change under the surface of developments that might seem arbitrary or inconsistent. This article traces the change from key competencies to science capabilities and, most recently, to enduring competencies. All these changes (and names) respond to increasing awareness of the challenges involved in…

Purpose -- This study is part of a comprehensive investigation conducted in Malaysia, examining science teachers' understanding of the Nature of Science (NOS) and their ability to translate this knowledge into Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) for NOS. This paper specifically examines how teachers apply their NOS knowledge to develop NOS PCK in…

In the last decades, science literacy has been progressively emphasised as an aim of science education. However, the science education literature does not present a consensus about both the meaning of science literacy. By studying such literature, we identified some of these aspects that may also be relevant for promoting students' critical…

Today, only people, who truly understand what scientific knowledge is and how it is obtained, are considered scientifically literate. This understanding expected in today's scientific areas is called the nature of science (NOS). This study aimed to determine the perceptions of high school students and their parents regarding NOS. In addition, the…

This study aimed to develop a valid and reliable scale that reveals secondary school pupils' attitudes toward science literacy. The survey model, one of the quantitative research methods, was used in the study. The validity and reliability study of the scale was carried out on secondary school pupils attending public schools in Turkey in the…

Previous research has shown that in prehigher education stages, inquiry-based teaching is not sufficient for forming a mature understanding of the nature of science (NOS). However, there is relatively little research conducted on colleges. Inquiry-based teaching should not overlook cognitive frameworks, as students' limited scientific reasoning…

Through local scientific learning, this action research attempts to improve primary school students' understanding of the nature of science. The target group consisted of nine grade 6 students from a school in Thailand's northeast. The observational tools were the understanding of nature of science test, understanding of nature of science…

Many studies have characterized students' difficulties in understanding and reasoning about scientific mechanisms. Some of those studies have drawn implications on teaching mechanisms and how to guide students while reasoning mechanistically. In this theoretical article, I claim that one component that has not garnered much attention in the…

There is substantial research in science education about students', teachers', and scientists' views of nature of science (NOS). Many studies have used NOS frameworks that focus on particular ideas such as tentativeness of scientific knowledge and cultural embeddedness of science. In this paper, we investigate NOS from the perspective of the…