Thai and Bangladeshi in-service science teachers' conceptions of nature of science: A comparative study

Definition of NOS

NOS is a fuzzy construct; it is neither universal nor stable. There are many attempts to define NOS; for example, McComas, Clough, and Almazroa (1998) provide an overall description of NOS as:

NOS is a fertile hybrid arena, which blends aspects of various social studies of science including the history, sociology, and philosophy of science combined with research from the cognitive sciences such as psychology into a rich description of what science is, how it works, how scientists operate as a social group and how society itself both directs and reacts to scientific endeavours. (p. 4)

From an intensive review of the NOS literature, in-service science teachers' conceptions of NOS can be categorized into four major groups: a) scientific knowledge, b) scientific method, c) scientists' work, and d) scientific enterprise. The next section presents science teachers' conceptions of NOS within these four groups.

In-service science teachers' conceptions of NOS

With the use of different methods and instruments, the literature suggests that many in-service science teachers possess an inadequate, mixed, and incoherent understanding of NOS (Abd-El-Khalick & BouJaoude, 1997; Dogan & Abd-El-Khalick, 2008; Haidar, 1999). Also, there is no significant relationship between science teachers' academic background or personal antecedents in school and their conceptions of NOS (Carey & Stauss, 1970; Lederman, 1992; Mellado, 1997). In-service science teachers' conceptions of NOS, in particular to scientific knowledge, scientific method, scientists' work, and scientific enterprise are presented in the following section.

Scientific knowledge: hypotheses, theories, and laws

In various studies, a majority of science teachers had naïve conceptions regarding a hierarchical relationship between hypotheses, theories, and laws (Abd-El-Khalick & BouJaoude, 1997; Dogan & Abd-El-Khalick, 2008; Haidar, 1999; Rubba & Harkness, 1993). They believed that when a hypothesis is proven correct, it becomes a theory. After a theory has been proved true many times by different people and has been around for a long time, it becomes a law. The availability or accumulation of supporting evidence was also linked with the status of the truth or correctness of hypotheses, theories, and laws (Dogan & Abd-El-Khalick, 2008). The conception that these constructs are different types of ideas was not grasped (Abd-El-Khalick & BouJaoude, 1997).

Scientific knowledge: tentativeness of science

Regarding the status of scientific knowledge, in-service science teachers can be categorized into two groups using a static-dynamic split. The science teachers in the first group view science as stable or having a static status, while those in the second group view science as tentative or having a dynamic status. In the static-science group, for example, 24.1 per cent of science teachers claimed that science is a collection of facts or a body of knowledge that explains the world (Tairab, 2001). Scientific knowledge, therefore, was regarded as static (Behnke, 1961). The major purpose of scientific research is, therefore, to collect as much data as possible (Craven, Hand, & Prain, 2002; Tairab, 2001). In the dynamic-science group, the science teachers generally believed in the tentativeness of scientific knowledge (Dogan & Abd-El-Khalick, 2008). For example, four of five primary teachers in Lunn's study (2002) believed that science is constantly evolving to adequately give a full world-view, especially some mysterious patterns in nature. Theories, for example, can be renewed and changed both in the light of new knowledge and new facts.

Scientific knowledge: cumulative knowledge

Scientific knowledge as cumulative knowledge was the naïve conception being linked to their status of truth or correctness (Dogan & Abd-El-Khalick, 2008). Most in-service science teachers strongly believed that scientific knowledge is cumulative and its advancement depends heavily on the accumulation of facts or increasing observation rather than changes in theory (Brickhouse, 1990; Haidar, 1999).

Scientific knowledge: scientific model

Scientific models are copies of reality is a popular uninformed conception of NOS for most science teachers (Dogan & Abd-El-Khalick, 2008). Scientific models, in their view, are copies of reality rather than human inventions (Abd-El-Khalick & BouJaoude, 1997) because scientists say they are true or because much scientific observation and/or research have shown them to be true (Dogan & Abd-El-Khalick, 2008). However, many teachers, especially those who hold constructivist views, can articulate the role of scientific models as scientists' best ideas or educated guesses to represent reality rather than exact replicas of experienced phenomena (Haidar, 1999).

Scientific method: universal, step-wise method

The scientific method is commonly perceived by science teachers as a universal step-wise method (Abd-El-Khalick & BouJaoude, 1997; Dogan & Abd-El-Khalick, 2008; Haidar, 1999). This can be attributed to the science curriculum that presents the scientific method as a sequence of steps that all students have to follow exactly in order to reach certain results (Haidar, 1999) or an unambiguous scientific truth (Brickhouse, 1990). For a majority of science teachers, good scientists were, therefore, those who follow a recipe - the steps of the scientific method - in their investigations (Abd-El-Khalick & BouJaoude, 1997; Haidar, 1999).

Scientists' work: theory-laden observation and subjectivity

Some of the most common bipolar views of NOS are subjectivity and objectivity, theory-laden and theory-free, or value-laden and value-free. For most science teachers, subjectivity plays a major role in the development of scientific ideas (Abd-El-Khalick & BouJaoude, 1997) because scientists' worldviews or paradigms affect their scientific thinking and decision-making (Lunn, 2002, p. 664). However, many science teachers strongly believed in objectivity in science, which is firmly based upon theory-free or value-free observation. For example, nearly half of the science teachers held the naïve conception that observation is not influenced by the theories that scientists hold (Brickhouse, 1990; Dogan & Abd-El-Khalick, 2008; Haidar, 1999). Most science teachers (71%) adopted the idealistic view that the scientists' interpretation was objective and far from their frames of reference (Abd-El-Khalick & BouJaoude, 1997; Rampal, 1992).

Scientists' work: creativity and imagination in science

The role of creativity and imagination in the construction of scientific ideas is overlooked by most science teachers because they believe that scientists must follow a fixed-step scientific method (Abd-El-Khalick & BouJaoude, 1997). For example, there were less than 10% of science teachers in Rampal's study (1992) who recognized the importance of creativity in scientists' work. In this case, 'creativity seems to be stereotypically dissociated from perceived scientific qualities' (p. 424).

Scientific enterprise: social and cultural influences on science

The social and cultural influences on the scientific enterprise are explicitly recognised by most science teachers (Brush, 1989). For example, 51 per cent and 42.3 per cent, respectively, of science teachers in Haidar (1999) and Rubba and Harkness (1993) indicated that a scientist is influenced by social factors. In addition, 79.6 per cent of science teachers in Tairab's study (2001) expressed the view that science and technology affect society and in turn society affects science and technology. However, only 10 per cent and 26 per cent, respectively, of science teachers believed that while collecting or presenting information a scientist is influenced by social biases and governmental pressure. They regarded the authoritative image of the scientist as accurate (Rampal, 1992).

Scientific enterprise: interaction between science and technology

It is, perhaps, an easy task for in-service science teachers to recognise the interaction between science and technology in such ideas as science is the knowledge base for technology, and technology influences science advancement (Rubba & Harkness, 1993). However, distinguishing between science and technology is probably a very difficult task for them (Rubba & Harkness, 1993). 'Technology is applied science' is their commonplace naïve conception about the relationship between science and technology (Tairab, 2001).

Education and NOS education in the Thai context

Thailand is located in the heart of Southeast Asia. The country is bordered to the north by Laos and Burma, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the west by the Andaman Sea and Burma. The Thai population was about 67 million. The literacy rate of Thai people is 92.6 per cent. Thailand has never been colonized. Religions espoused by the Thai people are Buddhism (94.6%), Islam (4.6%), Christianity (0.7%), and other (0.1%). The country's official spoken and written language is Thai; while the secondary language is English. Thailand is divided into 77 provinces, which are gathered into six regions - North, North-East, Central, East, West, and South. The capital and largest city of Thailand is Bangkok.

Basic education in Thailand includes 12 years of study (Grades 1-12). The proclamation of the National Education Act B.E. 2542 (A.D. 1999), revised in B.E. 2545 (Office of the Education Council, 2002), in Thailand brings all stakeholders together in joint continuing efforts toward education reform. Science is emphasised and situated in section 23 of the National Education Act (2002):

Education through formal, non-formal, and informal approaches shall give emphases to knowledge, morality, learning process, and investigation ... scientific and technological knowledge and skills, as well as knowledge, understanding and experience in management, conservation, and utilisation of natural resources and the environment in a balanced and sustainable manner ... (Office of the Education Council, 2002, p. 10)

To support the reform, the Ministry of Education launched a new curriculum, namely, the Basic Education Curriculum B.E. 2544 (A.D. 2001) (Ministry of Education, 2001), which consists of eight Learning Areas: Thai language; Mathematics; Science; Social Studies, Religion, and Culture; Foreign Languages; Health and Physical Education; Arts; and Occupations and Technology.

Specifically, the content of the Science learning area is "Application of knowledge and scientific process for study and search for knowledge and systematic problem-solving; logical, analytical and constructive thinking; and scientific-mindedness". In the Science learning area is the first time that NOS has been explicitly mentioned in the national curriculum. That is, NOS is mentioned in the learning sub-strand 8: Nature of Science and Technology, which consists of one standard (Standard Sc 8.1):

The student should be able to use the scientific process and scientific mind in investigation, solve problems, know that most natural phenomena have a definite period of investigation, [and] understand that science, technology and environment are interrelated (Institute for the Promotion of Teaching Science and Technology, 2002, p. 7).

Consequently, since 2001, all Thai science teachers must help their students accomplish the NOS standard mentioned earlier.

Before NOS being explicitly mentioned in the national basic education curriculum, there are many studies related to NOS. There are 26 NOS studies published during 1997-2001. These studies are the Master theses which were extensively researched in the Northeastern region. Of 26 Master's theses about NOS, there were 21 studies in relation to in-service secondary science teachers' conceptions of NOS. All of them employed a quantitative approach with the same questionnaire, the Understanding about Nature of Science Questionnaire (Boonmuangsaen, 1997). Boonmuangsaen created this questionnaire by applying the ideas from various NOS studies, i.e., Palmer (1979), Billeh and Malik (1977), Rubba and Anderson (1978), Pomery (1993), Tamir (1994), Doran, Guerin, and Cavalieri (1974), Fleming (1987), Ryan (1987) and Rubba and Harkness (1993). The questionnaire consisted of 94 items measuring four scales of NOS: Assumptions of the nature (12 items); Scientific knowledge (24 items); Scientific method (24 items), and Interaction between science-society-technology (34 items). All items are a five-rating scale ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree. An example item of the Assumptions of the Nature is: "Item 11: The natural phenomena must occur constantly." The item-total correlation and the Cronbach alpha coefficient of the Understanding about Nature of Science Questionnaire was between 0.438 to 0.867 and between 0.792 to 0.923, respectively.

The common goal for those 26 studies was to find the relationship between science teachers' gender, teaching experience, and levels or types of schools they taught at and their conceptions of NOS. Two major findings emerged from these quantitative studies. First, a majority of science teachers had a high level of understanding of NOS mentioned in the questionnaire. Second, there was no relationship between teachers' gender, teaching experience, and levels or types of schools taught and their conceptions of NOS.

With the newer instrument, the Myths of Science Questionnaire (MOSQ) (see Figure 1), Buaraphan (2009) discovered that Thai in-service science teachers held eight common uninformed conceptions of NOS: scientific theories can be developed to become laws; accumulation of evidence makes scientific knowledge more stable; scientists are open-minded without any biases; scientific theories are less secure than laws; the scientific method is a fixed step-by-step process; science and the scientific method can answer all questions; a scientific model expresses a copy of reality; and science and technology are identical.

Education and NOS education in the Bangladeshi context

Bangladesh is located in Southern Asia, bordering the Bay of Bengal, between Burma and India. The population in Bangladesh is about 163 million. The literacy rate of Bangladeshi people is 43.1%. The religion espoused by Bangladeshi people Islam (83%), Hindism (16%), and other (1%). The official languages used are Bangla (also known as Bengali) and English. Bangladesh became independent from Pakistan in 1971. There are seven divisions or provinces in Bangladesh: Barisal, Chittagong, Dhaka, Khulna, Rajshahi, Rangpur, and Sylhet. Dhaka is the capital city and largest province.

There are three education systems in Bangladesh: general, madrasa (religious), and technical-vocational and professional. Each of these is divided into five levels: primary (compulsory) (years 1-5), junior secondary (years 6-8), secondary (years 9-10), higher secondary (years 11-12), and tertiary (university).

Before graduating from the secondary education (Grades 6-12), all students must take a national test,the Board Exam, for the junior secondary, secondary, and higher secondary levels. The students in Grades 8 and 10 must take a national test for the Junior School Certificate (JSC) and the Secondary School Certificate (SSC), respectively. Normally, students study junior and secondary levels in the same school and shift to a college and take a national test for Higher Secondary Certificate (HSC) after Grade 12.

Bengali and English (language and literature), mathematics, general science, social science and religious study (Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and Christianity) are the compulsory subjects until the junior level. During Grades 9-12, students can choose to learn in the Science, Humanities, or Commerce fields. For the science field, the students can choose a specific field of science subject: physics, chemistry, biology, or higher mathematics. For the Humanities field, the students can choose one from these fields: history, geography, economics, or civics. For the Commerce field, the students can choose to learn specifically in accounting, introduction to business, or commercial geography. All fields must choose one optional subject from Agriculture studies, Computer study, or Arabic/ Sanskrit/ Pale.

The National Curriculum and Textbook Board (NCTB) develops the curriculum as well as producing the standard textbooks and assessment papers. The Ministry of Education is responsible for policy making. NOS is not explicitly mentioned in the Bangladeshi science curriculum; therefore, the literature about NOS in the Bangladeshi context is rare. One contemporary study by Sarkar and Gomes (2010) found that a majority of the participating science teachers held uninformed conceptions about most of the target NOS aspects. Also, the teachers were not consistent in expressing their views to a particular NOS aspect and to its associated aspects. They finally suggested doing more research for better understanding about Bangladeshi teachers' mental models of NOS and their NOS classroom practices.

From the literature review, there is no study for comparison of NOS conceptions held by Thai and Bangladeshi in-service science teachers. Such a comparative study may contribute to the NOS literature, especially in the Asian context, about cultivating or developing NOS education.