Research On Present Situation And Development Strategy Of High School Science Teachers' Conceptions Of Nature Of Science In Urumqi City

It is regarded as the core idea of the science curriculum reform to improve students' scientific literacy in the new round elementary education curriculum reform of China. And proper understanding of nature of science (NOS) is the core component of scientific literacy. In order to develop students' conceptions of NOS, teachers should have profound understanding of conceptions of NOS. Therefore, this dissertation aims to answer two questions: (1) How are high school science teachers' conceptions of NOS ? (2)What strategies can be used in developing in-service high school science teachers' conceptions of NOS?In order to know high school science teachers' conceptions of NOS, the author investigates 154 high school science teachers in Urumqi city from Oct.2007 to Dec.2007. The aim of this survey is to discover the relationship between high school science teachers' conceptions on NOS and their sex, educational experience, teaching subject, length of teaching experience, and teaching school type. The study reached some conclusions as follows through analyzing the survey data with SPSS 13.0 statistical software:1. Generally speaking, high school science teachers' conceptions on NOS are not optimistic. In addition to the "empirically-based nature", high school science teachers must improve their understanding of NOS in other dimensions, especially for the dimensions "subjective and objective nature", " the relations between science and the social culture ".2. There are no remarkable differences between high school science teachers' conceptions on NOS and their sex, educational experience, teaching subject, teaching school type. However, the cognition level of female teacher is a little higher than male; and high school science teachers' conceptions of NOS increase along with their educational experience; the cognition level of chemistry teachers appears to be higher than the physical and biological teachers; the cognition level of science teachers in the key-point middle schools is a little higher than science teachers in the general middle schools. 3. There is a remarkable difference between high school science teachers' conceptions of NOS and their length of teaching experience. The old teachers have much better understanding than young teachers on the " relative nature"; the young teachers have much better understanding than the old teachers on "subjective and objective nature".The questionnaire survey results show that high school science teachers in Urumqi city do not have the appropriate conceptions of NOS. Therefore, this dissertation proposes development strategies of high school science teachers' conceptions of NOS from two aspects:1. Development strategies based on continuing education: design"science studies"curriculum; strengthen pertinence and usability of training content; value participation, diversity and stratification of training way; combination between continuing education and school-based teaching and research.2. Development strategies based on teacher individual: actively participate in education and improve academic levels; carry on teaching reflection positively and raise the level of conceptions of NOS through reflective practice.