The effect of explicit instruction on student views of the nature of science and science related attitudes

This study aimed to determine if explicit instruction significantly improves students' understanding of the creative, testable, and tentative nature of science and the science related attitudes of lesson enjoyment and adoption of scientific thinking. Two instructional methods used to teach the nature of science, contextualized instruction and decontextualized instruction, were also compared to determine which method produced the best results. Seventh and eighth grade students at Southeast Middle School completed the Nature of Scientific Knowledge and Attitudes Survey to assess their understanding of the nature of science and science related attitudes.;Results indicated there were no statistically significant differences between the pretest and posttest changes in the treatment and nontreatment groups, though the nontreatment group showed a statistically significant improvement on the Tentative scale. There were no significant differences between the two methods of instruction that the treatment groups received, though the contextualized instruction group showed slightly better results.