Investigating the relationship between teachers’ nature of science conceptions and their practice of inquiry science

This study reveals that enhancing NOS conceptions helps teachers in their efforts to integrate inquiry into their instruction by boosting their confidence in their abilities to teach science through inquiry. This study also reveals that especially teachers who lack strong science backgrounds and prior experience with inquiry science are at risk. Similar to the findings of Roehrig & Luft, (2004), having a weak science background obscures teachers’ ability and/or willingness to transform their science instruction techniques from traditional to inquiry. Also, a better understanding of NOS concepts enhance teachers’ familiarity with science and scientific enterprise in general and inquiry science in particular. Specifically, a better understanding of NOS conceptions helps the teachers be more discerning of the characteristics of real science as practiced by scientists. As illustrated in Jason’s case, a better understanding of NOS conceptions may help teachers distinguish between real science as practiced by scientists and the distorted science as practiced in many traditional science classrooms. Such enhancements in the familiarity of the teachers with science and scientific enterprise may enhance their confidence in their ability to teach science through inquiry.

The findings of this study supports the findings of other studies in the literature in that adequate understanding of NOS conceptions is necessary but not sufficient for science teachers to successfully implement inquiry based science classes (Karakas, 2009; Lederman, 1999; Roehrig & Luft, 2004). This study is not suggesting that teachers’ inquiry practices influenced solely by their NOS conceptions but rather teachers’ NOS conceptions are part of the mix.

However, it appears the teachers who possess more sophisticated understanding of NOS implement less structured inquiries. Amy and Jason, who hold more sophisticated understanding of NOS, design inquiries that are more student oriented and more open ended in nature. Bencze, Bowen, & Alsop (2006) report similar findings. Specifically, they categorized teachers as having weak, moderate, and strong social constructivist views about science. They found that teachers who held strong social constructivist views about science had more of a tendency to use open-ended and student-centered inquiry activities.

Also, regardless of the sophistification level, the teachers’ NOS conceptions influence their decisions about which aspect of inquiry they emphasize in their inquiry teaching. Kelly for instance, who believes that science is procedural more than it is creative and associates doing science in her mind with being hands-on in a laboratory implements inquiry classes that are rich in hands-on content. Jason, on the other hand who associates science with being creative more than procedural incorporate inquiry into his teaching as a long term open inquires. In this open inquiry students are encouraged to use their creativity and logical thinking skills. Similarly, Amy and Jason, who consider communication skills an important component of science, emphasize a discussion-oriented approach to teaching science.

Other studies report similar findings. Lotter et al., (2007), for instance, report that teachers’ NOS conceptions guide their use of inquiry-based practices in the classroom. Keys and Bryan (2000) argue that conceptions of inquiry are tied to beliefs about what science “is” and about what kinds of knowledge and skills are worth teaching in science classrooms. Southerland, Gess-Newsome, Johnston (2003) report that teachers’ NOS conceptions are manifested in their classroom practices and they caution that this manifestation takes place in complicated ways. Similarly, according to Lunn (2002), the teachers’ understanding of the NOS is part of “hidden curriculum” that influences how teachers teach in the classroom. He also reports that the depth of the teachers’ understanding of NOS conceptions varies from one NOS conception to another. Similarly, Keys & Bryan (2001) found that teachers who hold the desired view of NOS are more likely to implement problem-based science instruction. These findings suggest that the impact of some NOS conceptions on teachers’ classroom practices may be more explicit than others. In other words, the subtlety of the influence of the teachers’ NOS conceptions on how they teach in the classroom may vary from one NOS conception to others. In this regard, this study supports the findings of Keys & Bryan (2001) and Lunn (2002) in that some NOS conceptions are reflected more explicitly in their teaching than others. As an example, after taking the NOS course the teachers began to ask students to base their explanations on scientific evidence. A better understanding of the subjective and empirical nature of scientific knowledge may have encouraged the teachers put more emphasis on scientific evidence in developing and defending scientific explanations. Similar findings are reported in the study of Friedrichsen, Muford, & Orgill, (2006). In this study, the authors report inquiry-teaching experiences of a former student of an inquiry Empowering Technologies (IET) course. This course was designed to enhance prospective teachers’ science content knowledge, understanding of inquiry, and NOS conceptions. The authors found that the teacher emphasized some aspects of inquiry while deemphasizing other aspects of inquiry. Specifically, the teacher equated inquiry with the use of evidence and reflected this in his teaching by asking students to base their explanations on evidence. On the other hand, he deemphasized the tentativeness of scientific knowledge and did not incorporate it into his teaching. The teacher believed that it was not appropriate to teach tentativeness of scientific knowledge in a secondary classroom setting because it may have caused them to question the trustworthiness of the content they learned (Friedrichsen, et al., 2006).