Challenges and Changes: Developing Teachers’ and Initial Teacher Education Students’ Understandings of the Nature of Science

Abstract

Teachers need an understanding of the nature of science (NOS) to enable them to incorporate NOS into their teaching of science. The current study examines the usefulness of a strategy for challenging or changing teachers’ understandings of NOS. The teachers who participated in this study were 10 initial teacher education chemistry students and six experienced teachers from secondary and primary schools who were introduced to an explicit and reflective activity, a dramatic reading about a historical scientific development. Concept maps were used before and after the activity to assess teachers’ knowledge of NOS. The participants also took part in a focus group interview to establish whether they perceived the activity as useful in developing their own understanding of NOS. Initial analysis led us to ask another group, comprising seven initial teacher education chemistry students, to take part in a modified study. These participants not only completed the same tasks as the previous participants but also completed a written reflection commenting on whether the activity and focus group discussion enhanced their understanding of NOS. Both Lederman et al.’s (Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 39(6), 497–521, 2002) concepts of NOS and notions of “naive” and “informed” understandings of NOS and Hay’s (Studies in Higher Education, 32(1), 39–57, 2007) notions of “surface” and “deep” learning were used as frameworks to examine the participants’ specific understandings of NOS and the depth of their learning. The ways in which participants’ understandings of NOS were broadened or changed by taking part in the dramatic reading are presented. The impact of the data-gathering tools on the participants’ professional learning is also discussed.

Appendix: Excerpt from, From Democritus to Rutherford: Developing our understanding of atomic structure. (Haigh and Ward n.d.)

Cast

Narrator, Democritus, Aristotle, Lucretius, Lavoisier, Dalton, Madame Curie, J. J. Thomson and Rutherford

Narrator

The story of the development of our understanding of atomic structure begins in Greece, a long, long time ago. The Greeks had a sophisticated schooling structure where teachers and their students met to discuss ideas about the world that they lived in. These teachers and their students proposed theories about the nature of the world and would debate them vigorously. Every few years another teacher would propose a new idea and gain a following, but no one seriously believed these ideas could be proved right or wrong, and they never carried out any experiments to test the ideas.

We will start our story about the development of an atomic theory in the fifth century B.C. with Leucippus and his student Democritus, two Greek philosophers and teachers. Here is Democritus.

Democritus

I spent a lot of time thinking and asking questions. What would happen if I took a block of gold and kept cutting it up? Large block to lump, lump to powder, powder to what? Maybe I would reach a point where I couldn’t cut it up any more. I would be left with an “uncuttable” particle. I called this particle “atomos,” which means unable to be divided. I thought only atoms and empty space existed.

I have also spent some time thinking about how substances change. I suggest that these changes involve the joining and separation of the particles I called atoms.

Narrator

Not everyone agreed with Democritus. Plato and Aristotle led the debate against his ideas by asking to be shown atoms. Listen to Aristotle.

Aristotle

‘Show me an atom.’ I don’t believe they exist. If atoms are meant to explain nature then a universe can exist without a god. I believe that matter consists of four elements—water, fire, air, and earth. There is also a fifth element only found in the heavens—ether.

Rutherford

I was brought up at Havelock in the Marlborough Sounds in New Zealand and went to Nelson College. I wasn’t top of my class and was not accepted at teachers’ college. I went to Canterbury College instead, where I studied physics. My work on magnetism won me a scholarship to Europe, where I became one of J. J. Thomson’s students. I discovered that radioactive uranium emits two different kinds of ‘rays’—alpha and beta.

Narrator

A year later Curie suggested that the alpha rays were in fact particles ejected by a radioactive substance—a hypothesis that we now know to be true. Back to Rutherford.

Rutherford

This really fascinated me. The atom was no longer considered to be indivisible…but what was its structure?