Improving Nature of Science Instruction in Elementary Classrooms with Modified Trade Books and Educative Curriculum Materials

Abstract

This chapter describes a strategy for teaching about nature of science (NOS) in elementary grades through read-alouds with science trade books that have been modified to include explicit references to NOS. Teaching NOS has historically been difficult for teachers across grade levels. Research shows that even secondary teachers with a strong science background, an informed understanding of NOS, and the desire to teach NOS still struggle with effectively teaching NOS in their classrooms (Wahbeh and Abd-El-Khalick 2014). This issue is compounded for instructors at the elementary level because these teachers typically do not have adequate, let alone robust, science content knowledge and are not science specialists (Banilower et al. 2013). Still, it is especially important that NOS is addressed in elementary grades because by the time students reach the older grades, they will already have developed naïve NOS views (see Abd-El-Khalick and Lederman 2000; Lederman 1992; and Lederman and Lederman 2014 for reviews). In the absence of explicit NOS instruction, naive conceptions of NOS are learned incidentally through representations of NOS in textbooks (Abd-El-Khalick et al. 2008) and trade books (Brunner and Abd-El-Khalick 2017), language use in science classes (Lemke 1990), and even popular media (Aikenhead 1988; Walls 2012). Thus, there is a need for strategies that help elementary teachers develop more informed views of NOS, as well as supporting them in implementing effective NOS teaching practices.