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Asia-Pacific Forum
on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 10, Issue 1, Article 4
(June, 2009) |
To explore pre-service science teachers’ conceptions of the NOS, the authors of this study utilised a newly developed instrument entitled the Myths of Science Questionnaire (MOSQ). The MOSQ consists of 14 items and addresses four aspects of the NOS: (1) scientific knowledge (6 items—Items 1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 9); (2) scientific method (3 items—Items 5, 6, 7); (3) scientists’ work (2 items—Items 10, 11); and (4) scientific enterprise (3 items—Items 12, 13, 14). The creation of the MOSQ items was largely inspired by McComas’s (1998) article entitled “The Principal Elements of the Nature of Science: Dispelling the Myths.” All of the MOSQ items are presented as Figure 1 in the Appendix. MOSQ respondents are required to select which of three responses, i.e., agree, uncertain, or disagree, best fits their opinion of the item statement and to provide an additional written response to support their selection.
The MOSQ was first validated by five science educators. They were asked to examine the items in terms of their relevance to the dimensions of the NOS and their clarity and suitability to the respondents. A second version, which had been revised according to the experts’ comments, was then pilot tested with 21 pre-service science teachers at one university in the central region of Thailand in order to determine whether they understood the items and to assess how much time they would spend completing the MOSQ. Any ambiguities found during this trial were clarified for the respondents and recorded for further revision of the MOSQ. The completion of the questionnaire took approximately 45 minutes.
The data was collected during the first semester of the 2008 academic year. The respondents were 113 pre-service science teachers in a five-year science teacher preparation programme at one university in the central region of Thailand. The researchers administered the MOSQ and collected it back from all of the respondents. A majority of the respondents (83.2%) were female. There were 28 (24.8%) pre-service science teachers in their first year of the study, and 17 (15.0%), 24 (21.2%), 20 (17.7%), 24 (21.2%) in the second, third, fourth and fifth years of study, respectively. The major fields of study of the participants were biology (33.3%), chemistry (30.7%), general science (20.0%) and physics (16.0%). Notably, the first year pre-service science teachers had not yet selected a major field of study.
The frequency of each response (i.e., agree, uncertain, and disagree) was first counted, and subsequently calculated for its percentage. The agree, uncertain and disagree responses were respectively interpreted as informed, uncertain and uninformed conceptions of the NOS. However, “‘one’s view of the NOS is a complex web of ideas that loses meaning when reduced to simple numbers” (Palmquist & Finley, 1997, p. 601). Therefore, the written arguments supporting each response were categorised and their frequencies calculated for each category.
