The Nature Of Science Research And Science Teacher Education

Improving the students' view on "Nature Of Science" (NOS) has been focused in science education recently, and it has been critical elements for developing scientific literacy of all learners. It's very important to improve pre-service science teachers' views about NOS, because the science teachers' views about the NOS will directly affect the students'understandings.We can see the characteristics of science knowledge transformed from objective to subjective, absolute to relative, static to dynamic by tracing the people's views on NOS in philosophical history, According to the current views on NOS, the science educators acknowledge that the reformed NOS have eight characteristics, which are (a) tentative nature; (b) the empirical nature; (c) subjective and objective nature; (d) creative and imaginative nature; (e) socially and culturally embeddedness; (f) distinction between observation and inference; (g) diversity of scientific methods; (h) distinction between theories and laws.The study investigate 310 undergraduate students by VANSK instrument from Oct.2004 to Jan.2005, in order to know if the pre-service science teachers have adequate and correct understanding of NOS. The VANSK instrument is designed based on the eight characteristics of NOS, it has good reliability and validity. The study reached some conclusions as follows through analyzing the survey data with SPSS 11.0 statistical software and interviewing some students:(1)The pre-service science teachers have inadequate and incorrect understanding of all aspects except for the "empirically-based nature". Teacher's education must improve their understanding of NOS in all aspects, especially for the aspects "subjective and objective nature", "distinction between theories and laws", "diversity of scientific methods".(2)The male students have much better understanding than female students on the "subjective and objective nature" and "creative and imaginative nature".(3) The students of biology have much better understanding than students of physics on the "tentative nature".The students of physics have much better understanding than students of chemistry and biology on the "creative and imaginative nature".In addition, the study interviewed twenty physics teachers in Aug.2005, The result also indicate that the science teachers not have adequate and informed views on the NOS, and people haven't recognized the importance of NOS in current teacher's education programs, and the college and universities lack the corresponding curriculum to improve student's view of NOS.According to the study, the teacher's education must emphasize on NOS education to cultivate excellent science teachers. There are some strategies to improve science teacher and student's view on NOS in teacher's education: (a) attach importance to science inquiry; (b) combine literae humaniores with science in classroom; (c) design HPS (History, Philosophy and Sociology of Science) curriculum.