Science teachers’ conceptions of nature of science: The case of Bangladesh

This study reveals that majority of Bangladeshi school science teachers held uninformed conceptions about the roles of hypotheses, theories and laws. In particular, none of the respondents believed in equal credibility of scientific theories and laws, rather most of them believed in the myth “laws-are-mature-theories-fable” (Bell, et al., 2000). This result is consistent with other studies conducted on pre-service teachers elsewhere (e.g., Buaraphan & Sung-Ong, 2009).

An important finding of this research is that teachers were not consistent in expressing their views to a particular NOS aspect and to its associated aspects. For example, a majority of teachers acknowledged the place of imagination and creativity in science, which are regarded as important in developing scientific knowledge, particularly to creating scientific models and designing experiments (Abd-El-Khalick, Bell, & Lederman, 1998; Bell, et al., 2000). However, scientific models were viewed as a copy of reality rather than a product of scientist’s creativity and imagination by a majority of teachers in this research; this differs from the findings of previous research (Bell, et al., 2000; Buaraphan & Sung-Ong, 2009; Haidar, 1999). Also, most of the teachers viewed scientific experiments as a universal, fixed step-by-step process; they did not acknowledge the place of creativity and imagination in designing an experiment.

This research also found that in many cases, teachers’ written responses could not justify their informed view about a particular aspect of NOS. For example, many of the teachers in this research held an informed view about the tentativeness of scientific knowledge; however written explanatory data showed that most acknowledged this uncertainty due to the “rapid advancement of science and technology,” rather than a scientist’s use of creativity, imagination and human inference in developing scientific knowledge or as a result of applying established scientific knowledge to situations outside of a controlled laboratory context (Ryder, 2001).

In this research, science teachers perceived scientists as open-minded and having no biases. Their written responses did not reflect any notion that scientific investigation could be influenced by scientists’ background and mind-set. This view held by the teachers may make them resistant to perceive science knowledge as subjective and theory-laden after Lederman (2004).

As previously discussed, science teachers in this study believed in the myths of the scientific method and experimentation. Teachers may have these uninformed views about scientific inquiry as a result of the traditional portrayal of recipe-like experiments in science textbooks, as textbooks often play a vital role in understanding the process of science (Chiappetta, Fillman, & Sethna, 1991). Like other educational systems (Abd-El-Khalick, et al., 2008), science textbooks in Bangladesh portrayed that there is one general method of conducting a scientific investigation (Siddique, 2008). It may therefore be reasonable to argue that science textbooks should be revised in line with the contemporary conception that there is no single scientific method to be used in developing scientific knowledge (Abd-El-Khalick & Lederman, 2000b; Abd-El-Khalick, et al., 2008; Bell & Lederman, 2003; Lederman, 2004; McComas, et al., 1998) .

A majority of teachers viewed science as a collective activity; they also believed in the influence of society, politics and culture in the development of scientific knowledge. Although these informed conceptions of scientific enterprise are very positive, many of them held an uninformed view that “technology is the applied science,” as previous research suggested (Buaraphan & Sung-Ong, 2009). In line with the argument of Buaraphan and Sung-Ong (2009), we would also argue that a clear distinction between science and technology and their associated relationship should be articulated and advocated by science educators through various science education programmes.

In this research, we found that science teachers in Bangladesh held uninformed conceptions about many of the NOS aspects considered in this research. As in some other educational contexts (McComas, et al., 1998), Bangladeshi science teachers rarely have the opportunity to learn about the contemporary NOS in their own studies; therefore, it is not surprising that they would hold uninformed conceptions about the contemporary NOS. As science teachers’ conceptions of NOS influence their teaching NOS in the classroom (Buaraphan & Sung-Ong, 2009), learning about NOS should be included in science studies at different levels of education and in different teacher education programmes designed for science teachers in Bangladesh.

But ways of thinking cannot be abstracted from thoughts, in either scientific research or teaching. Thoughts and how to think are indivisibly one. If we could erase all the ideas a person has, we would have erased all intelligence; not left behind the power to think, and with nothing left to think about. The results of this research suggest that further research is required to better understand how Bangladeshi teachers model NOS in their classes and how the pedagogies of teacher education inform this modelling. As Ogborn (1995) has argued, what is needed as a starting point is a modest and realistic view of the natural sciences, no longer tainted by pretending to fulfil an impossible rationalist dream, and similarly, no longer suspect as failing to do so.

Acknowledgment: We would like to thank Dr. Rod Fawns, The University of Melbourne, for reviewing the earlier draft of this paper.