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Asia-Pacific Forum on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 20, Issue 2, Article 2 (Jun., 2021) |
Science teacher education on nature of science through explicit and reflective curriculum development
María-Antonia MANASSERO-MAS1 and Ángel VÁZQUEZ-ALONSO2,*
1 University of the Balearic Islands, Department of Psychology, SPAIN
E-mail: ma.manassero@uib.es
2 University of the Balearic Islands, Centre of Postgraduate Studies, SPAIN
*Corresponding Author's E-mail: angel.vazquez@uib.es
Received 27 Oct., 2020
Revised 23 Jun., 2021
Nature of science (NOS) is a key component of scientific literacy, so science teacher education on NOS is critical to ensure students’ scientific literacy. According to mainstream NOS literature, explicit and reflective interventions are recommended to effectively teach NOS. This paper presents an experience for the initial education of secondary science teachers, which focuses on teachers’ professional and pedagogical content knowledge development on NOS. A mixed-method approach involving quantitative and qualitative activities was applied to evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention to improve teachers’ NOS understanding. The quantitative activity was carried out through a quasi-experimental design with pre-post-test assessments, and the qualitative activity involved the teachers’ development of a teaching-learning sequence on a controversial science historical case and their self-reflections on their NOS beliefs, as expressed in the sequence and the answers to the test. The participants are two cohorts of Spanish high-school science teachers enrolled in the Master’s course to earn their pre-service education license to teach in Spanish schools. The results diagnosed pre- and post-test teachers’ NOS beliefs, their actual improvements, and their self-assessments of their understanding of and changes on NOS. The findings showed an overall modest improvement of teachers’ NOS understanding, the differential impact of treatment across cohorts, teachers, and NOS issues, and the difficulty of the self-reflection processes to develop teachers’ awareness of their NOS beliefs. Furthermore, this ability was positively and significantly related to post-test and improvement indexes. Finally, the impact, generalization, improvement, and limits of the intervention model are discussed.
Keywords: nature of science; pre-service teacher education; experimental research; intervention assessment; scientific literacy; science competence.
