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Asia-Pacific Forum
on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 15, Issue 1, Article 1 (Jun., 2014) |
First of all, MOSQ reveals that Thai in-service science teachers do not possess a high level of NOS conceptions as was previously found by a quantitative instrument, The Understanding about NOS Questionnaire (Boonmuangsaen, 1997). This contradictory finding may come from the different instrument used. MOSQ can yield more qualitative data that may provide another perspective for science educators in exploring NOS conceptions.
This study suggests that cultivating NOS education is a difficult and challenging task. For more than a decade of explicit inclusion of NOS in the basic education curriculum of Thailand, NOS is generally believed to have become deeply rooted in Thai science teachers and their classrooms. However, this study reveals that Thai science teachers still possess many uninformed conceptions of NOS. In addition, one NOS study conducted in the Thai context indicates that science teachers' conceptions of NOS are stable and resistant to change. Many Thai science teachers face difficulties in integrating NOS in their teaching because the new science curriculum does not suggest to them how to teach NOS. Embedding NOS in teaching appears as a difficult task requiring a great amount of support from the government (Buaraphan, 2012).
There are two most common uninformed conceptions of NOS held by the science teachers from Thailand and Bangladesh: Scientific theories can be developed to become laws; and Accumulation of evidence makes scientific knowledge more stable.
This study suggests that cultivating NOS education is a difficult and challenging task. For more than a decade of explicit inclusion of NOS in the basic education curriculum of Thailand, NOS is generally believed to have become deeply rooted in Thai science teachers and their classrooms. However, this study reveals that Thai science teachers still possess many uninformed conceptions of NOS. In addition, one NOS study conducted in the Thai context indicates that science teachers' conceptions of NOS are stable and resistant to change. Many Thai science teachers face difficulties in integrating NOS in their teaching because the new science curriculum does not suggest to them how to teach NOS. Embedding NOS in teaching appears as a difficult task requiring a great amount of support from the government (Buaraphan, 2012).
The first uninformed conception of NOS shows that the participants from both countries cannot recognize the difference between scientific theories and laws: Laws are the statement of patterns from observable phenomenon; and Theories are generalized descriptions of those observed patterns. In this case, Thai and Bangladeshi science teachers believed in the laws-are-mature-theories-fables that leads them to perceive theories as being less secure than laws (Abd-El-Khalick & BouJaoude, 1997; Dogan & Abd-El-Khalick, 2008; Haidar, 1999). The misconception regarding laws-are-mature-theories-fables in both Thailand and Bangladesh has generally emerged from the appearance of a hierarchical relationship between hypotheses, theories and laws in many science textbooks as: Hypotheses → Theories → Laws. This misinterpretation of hypotheses, theories, and laws has been embedded in science education of both countries for a long time and is hard to uproot.
The second uninformed conception of NOS shows the popularity of Baconian induction. That is, both Thai and Bangladeshi science teachers view science as a cumulative process—individual pieces of evidence are collected and examined until a law is discovered—rather than revisionary process (Brickhouse, 1990; Haidar, 1999). In this case, they are unaware of the problem of Baconian induction, i.e., "even a preponderance of evidence does not guarantee the production of valid knowledge" (McComas, 1998, p. 58). From the literature, it appears that these two common misconceptions of NOS found in Thai and Bangladeshi science teachers are also common for others around the world (Dogan & Abd-El-Khalick, 2008; Iqbal, Azam, & Rana, 2009; McComas, 2008). The misconception of NOS regarding the Baconian induction may link with the laws-are-mature-theories-fables. As described earlier, some teachers or people strongly believe in the hierarchical relationship between theories and laws. That is, when evidence supporting a theory is continuously accumulated time after time; one day when such accumulated evidence is sufficient, the theory can become a law.
Science educators need to be more aware of the two common uninformed conceptions of NOS mentioned earlier. This implies that despite the explicit inclusion of NOS in the environment as in the Thai context, those uninformed NOS conceptions are still alive. They should be regarded as conceptions of NOS which are resistant to change.
This comparative study reveals the advantage of explicit inclusion of NOS in science curriculum by showing that Thai science teachers hold significantly more informed conceptions of NOS than Bangladeshi teachers: specifically, the NOS conceptions of science as individual enterprise, creativity and imagination in science, and experiments as the way for testing scientific knowledge. When analyzing the participants' conceptions of NOS in four subcategories (scientific knowledge, scientific method, scientists' work, and scientific enterprise), Thai in-service science teachers present more informed conceptions of NOS than Bangladeshi teachers in three subcategories. These findings promote the explicit inclusion of NOS in the national science curriculum rather than implicit inclusion. Without explicit inclusion of NOS in the science curriculum, Bangladeshi science teachers rarely have the opportunity to learn and teach about NOS (Sarkar & Gomes, 2010). NOS understanding should not be anticipated as a side effect of hands-on science (Akindehin, 1988) as previously believed.
