Abstract
The effective continuing professional development (CPD) programs primarily aim to have an impact on teachers’ knowledge bases, beliefs, and views and their classroom practices, which rationally lead most of the researchers to investigate those changes on teachers primarily. Although neglected, the interrelationship between CPD programs and students is considered complex, and CPDs ultimately aim to have an impact on students’ views, too. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to survey the changes of middle school students’ views of the nature of science (NOS) by providing a large-scale CPD to their teachers and, in other words, identify the impact of CPD on ultimate beneficiaries, namely students. In this study, 10 science teachers’ data and, in the first phase, 481 and, in the second phase, 422 students’ data and the changes in their NOS views were analyzed. Results showed that the students’ and teachers’ NOS views changed positively. For the impact of teachers on the students’ views, the teachers’ prior NOS knowledge, years of experience, and the number of implemented activities were found to be the influential factors for the transmission of NOS views.
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The authors would like to express their gratitude to the TUBITAK, MONE, and BIDOMEG project team for their support.
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This study was supported by the TUBITAK (the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey) under the grant number 111K527.
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Özer, F., Doğan, N., Yalaki, Y. et al. The Ultimate Beneficiaries of Continuing Professional Development Programs: Middle School Students’ Nature of Science Views. Res Sci Educ 51 (Suppl 2), 757–782 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11165-019-9824-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11165-019-9824-1