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Asia-Pacific Forum on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 8, Issue 2, Article 6 (Dec., 2007) Mehmet KARAKAS The influence of constructivism on nature of Science as an area of research and as a classroom subject |
Science curricula vary widely among countries, states, school districts, and individual schools. The most vivid differences are concerned with the particular science topics or concepts to be included. Such differences in course and curricular content are unavoidable, as each course must present only a small sample of the scientific generalizations and principles drawn from a consistently and rapidly expanding discipline (Lederman, 1992). There is no consensus among science educators concerning the specific content to be included in contemporary science courses or even the methods and strategies of instruction to be used. However, there appears to be strong agreement on at least one of the objectives of science instruction. The development of an “adequate understanding of the nature of science” or an understanding of “science as a way of knowing” continues to be convincingly advocated as a desired outcome of science instruction (American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), 1989, Lederman, 1992). Although the “nature of science” has been defined in numerous ways, it most commonly refers to the values and assumptions inherent to the development of scientific knowledge (Lederman & Zeidler, 1987). This characterization nevertheless remain fairly general, and philosophers of science, historians of science, sociologists of science, and science educators are quick to disagree on a specific definition for the nature of science (NOS). Such disagreement, however, should not be surprising given the multifaceted and complex nature of the human endeavor we call science. Moreover, similar to scientific knowledge, conceptions of NOS are tentative and dynamic: These conceptions have changed throughout the development of science and systematic thinking about its nature and workings did too (Abd-El-Khalick & Lederman, 1998). However, at the end, there is an agreement (even through not complete) about nature of science among science educators that scientific knowledge is tentative (subject to change), empirically based (based on and/or derived from observations of the natural world), subjective (theory-laden), partly the product of human inference, imagination, and creativity (involves the invention of explanation), and socially and culturally embedded. Also two additional important aspects are the distinction between observations and inferences, and the functions of and relationships between scientific theories and laws (Lederman, Abd-El-Khalick, Akerson, 2000).
The aim of this paper is to look at how one particular learning perspective has influenced the research on NOS and the way the nature of science is taught by reviewing some relevant NOS studies. Many researchers taking different research perspectives have done research in the nature of science. This paper examines how a constructivist learning theory perspective has influenced research on the nature of science, as well as the teaching and learning of the nature of science. In doing so, this paper divides into three parts. The first part looks at the historical development of the nature of science and discusses the current status of research on the teaching and learning of NOS, as well as the teaching and learning of NOS in pre-college classrooms. Second part discusses how constructivism has influenced research on the teaching and learning of nature of science by examining how research in the area of NOS was conducted prior to the use of constructivism as a learning theory perspective. In the third part, the paper examines the influence of constructivism on teaching and learning of nature of science ideas in classrooms by first examining how NOS was promoted prior to the use of constructivism, and then compare this with how they were promoted using a constructivist perspective.
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