Abstract
For many years, hegemonic approaches to teaching the nature of science (NOS) have focused mainly on understanding some epistemic (i.e., rational, or cognitive) aspects involved in the construction of science. So, aspects of a non-epistemic (i.e., non-rational, contextual, or extra-scientific) nature have been practically neglected in these predominant proposals for teaching NOS. However, those of us who advocate a more holistic NOS teaching, with a balanced integration of both epistemic and non-epistemic aspects of NOS, have reason to celebrate. The development of the family resemblance approach (FRA) to NOS, initially proposed by Irzik and Nola (2011, 2014), and then suitably adapted by Erduran and Dagher (2014) for science education, has cemented such a purpose in the current literature on NOS teaching research. But, like all scientific milestones, there are antecedents that, in some way, have also contributed to building the path that has brought us to this point. Therefore, it is fair to acknowledge them. Thus, the aim of this article is to provide a critical discussion of all of this and to make an explicit acknowledgement of some of these antecedents, such as the framework of the science-technology-society (STS) tradition, among others, without undermining the important role of the FRA in achieving the current predominant vision of holistic NOS teaching.
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1 Boosting the non-epistemic dimension of NOS in science education
A basic understanding of how science works, including its values, limits and the various factors that influence its development, is considered a fundamental goal of desirable scientific literacy for citizens (Holbrook & Rannikmae, 2009; National Science Teacher Association [NSTA], 2020; Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD], 2019; 2023). Such meta-knowledge, derived mainly from studies in the history, philosophy, and sociology of science, is commonly referred to as the nature of science (NOS). In the field of science education, NOS is one of the constructs or contents that has caused most controversy in recent years when determining what to teach about this and how to integrate it into the science curriculum (Abd-El-Khalick, 2012; Acevedo-Díaz & García-Carmona, 2016; Allchin, 2011; Clough, 2007; Duschl & Grandy, 2013; Hodson, 2014; Kampourakis, 2016; Matthews, 2012; Schwartz et al., 2012; Wallace, 2017).
Beyond this educational problem, which is of no small importance, some of us who have been researching the teaching and learning of NOS for quite some time are celebrating. Finally, the non-epistemic dimension of NOS is beginning to establish itself as a key component in theoretical proposals for its integration into science education. In my opinion, the milestone that will mean that there are few excuses for not including non-epistemic aspectsFootnote 1 in approaches to teaching NOS is the article written recently by Sibel Erduran in the journal Science, entitled ‘Social and institutional dimensions of science: The forgotten components of the science curriculum?’. In the article, she states:
(…) there is a critical aspect of science that is often ignored in the science curriculum, and that is the inherent social and institutional character of science itself. When science curricula underrepresent or do not include such social and institutional dimensions of science, which play a key role in the validation and communication of scientific processes, it is as if a fundamental element of science has been dismantled, projecting an image of science that is idealized, reconstructed, and distorted. (Erduran, 2023)
From my point of view, the importance of Erduran’s article is not so much because of the argument it makes in defense of dealing with non-epistemic aspects of NOS in science education, which have already been explicitly and profusely developed in previous works (e.g., Acevedo-Díaz, 2006; Allchin, 1999, 2011; Aragón-Méndez et al., 2019; Erduran & Dagher, 2014; Gandolfi, 2019; García-Carmona & Acevedo-Díaz, 2017, 2018), but because of (1) the prestige of the medium in which it is published (Science is one of the most prestigious journals in the world) and (2) the community to which it is addressed: the entire scientific community in general. It should be noted that despite the insistence of science education research to give relevance to NOS, for many scientists, science teachers and curriculum designers, understanding the aspects of NOS is a secondary or minor issue for the development of science (Diéguez, 2022) and for science education (García-Carmona, 2022a, b; Olson, 2018; Waters-Adams, 2006). Indeed, it seems that the famous physicist Richard Feynman even went so far as to say that philosophy of science is just as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds (Diéguez, 2022). However, while an informed understanding of NOS may not be essential for scientists’ work,Footnote 2 it is indispensable for adequate scientific literacy (Holbrook & Rannikmae, 2009; OECD, 2019) because it “enhances students’ understandings of science concepts and enables them to make informed decisions about scientifically-based personal and societal issues.” (NSTA, 2020). Furthermore, understanding NOS as an educational objective is justified by the fact that if science is one of the greatest achievements of mankind (Fortus et al., 2022), people should have a basic understanding of what science is and how it works (Driver et al., 1996; Shamos, 1995).
2 Where do we come from in the approaches to teaching NOS?
Just a few years ago, if you argued that the understanding of NOS should also integrate non-epistemic aspects (i.e., those of a non-rational, contextual, or extra-scientific nature), in a proportion equivalent to the epistemic (i.e., rational o cognitive) ones, you were considered little less than a ‘heretic’ in certain science education research journals. This was fundamentally so because the predominant proposals for NOS teaching in the international panorama focused on understanding, mainly, the epistemic aspects that usually mediate in the construction of scientific knowledge (Dagher, 2020; García-Carmona & Acevedo-Díaz, 2018). This is evidenced by some systematic literature reviews of the last two decades on the implementation of NOS in science classrooms (Bugingo et al., 2022; Cofré et al., 2019).
One such proposal, which became quite influential and hegemonic for years, is that of Norman G. Lederman and colleagues (Lederman et al., 2002; Lederman, 2006), also known as ‘The Lederman seven’ (Matthews, 2012). This proposal (Table 1) includes six clearly epistemic aspects of NOS (aspects 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 and 7), and a generic one referring to the influence of society and culture on the development of science, and vice versa (aspect 5).
Later, Randy L. Bell separated the tenet ‘the empirical basis of scientific knowledge’ into two (‘empirical evidence’ and ‘scientific methods’) and removed the one referring to the social and cultural embeddedness of science, thus obtaining a fully epistemic proposal of NOS (Bell, 2009). Likewise, Fouad Abd-El-Khalick (2012) expanded the number of NOS aspects to 10 from a further breakdown of the original proposal (Lederman, 2006), although only one of these would be clearly non-epistemic (social and cultural embeddedness of science).
Other popular theoretical proposals for NOS teaching that are rather biased toward the epistemic dimension can also be found in the literature. One of them is that of William F. McComas, who developed a framework of NOS ideas through what he called “myths of science” (McComas, 1998). Of the original 15 myths that he tackled to understand NOS (Table 2), I would say that at least 12 are of an eminently epistemic nature after reviewing their descriptions. Another is that of Jonathan Osborne and colleagues, which arises from a Delphi study to determine what to teach about science (Osborne et al., 2003). Of the 17 emerging NOS aspects in this study (Table 3), only one could, in my opinion, be considered genuinely non-epistemic (moral and ethical dimensions in development of scientific knowledge).
Subsequently, other frameworks emerged for understanding NOS, which also mainly focused on the epistemic dimension. For example, Chen et al. (2013) designed and validated a questionnaire to assess student ideas about NOS (SINOS) and acknowledged as a limitation that the questionnaire was “centered on epistemological views and common stereotypes, leaving ontological and sociological aspects unexplored.” (p. 426). This was possibly due to the strong influence of the NOS positions of Lederman and co-workers, as can be read in the SINOS rationale. Perhaps it would have been more appropriate to call this questionnaire ‘assessment of student conceptions about epistemology of science’. But at that time the idea prevailed that NOS was equivalent or confined to the nature of scientific knowledge (NOSK) (Hodson, 2014; Matthews, 2012); something that Lederman himself later acknowledged (Lederman & Lederman, 2019).Footnote 3 However, no one would rightly imagine or accept that a questionnaire assessing ideas about NOS would focus only on non-epistemic aspects of science development. Thus, approaches to NOS teaching that were not aligned with some of the above and that usually expanded the number of non-epistemic aspects to be addressed, in order to show a more holistic view of NOS (Acevedo-Díaz & García-Carmona, 2016), were received with considerable skepticism in leading science education journals.
3 Why include non-epistemic aspects in NOS teaching?
In the framework of the science-technology-society (STS) movement for the scientific literacy of all people, Vázquez-Alonso et al. (2005) wrote:
Science and technology are human creations and contingent on the historical and social frameworks of knowledge creation (...). Science education must be sensitive to this idea, so that, far from limiting itself to show only the epistemic and cognitive aspects (...), it suggests taking into consideration the axiological, subjective, and contextual factors that also influence the construction of knowledge. (p. 9)
Indeed, the history of science clearly shows that the development of science is not only influenced by epistemic factors, but also -and very decisively- by many other factors of a non-epistemic nature (Acevedo-Díaz & García-Carmona, 2016, 2017; García-Carmona, 2021a; García-Carmona & Acevedo-Díaz, 2018); that is, social, ethical, moral, political, economic, cultural, emotional, etc. factors. As Knorr-Cetina (1981) pointed out more than four decades ago, “Distinctions between the cognitive and the social, the technical and the career-relevant, the scientific and the non-scientific are constantly blurred and redrawn in the laboratory” (p. 23). More recently, Mork et al. (2022) claimed that explicit attention in the science curriculum to non-epistemic aspects of NOS, as the social-institutional aspects of science, humanizes NOS.
Within the classical philosophical framework of the “context distinction” in the construction of knowledge (Seo & Chang, 2015), it is often argued that the non-epistemic aspects would emerge mainly in the context of discovery (i.e., selection of the research question, hypothesis development, etc.); thus, the context of justification (i.e., the process of testing and evaluating hypotheses) would be influenced only by epistemic factors. However, a thorough analysis of the history of science shows that both contexts, besides being difficult to distinguish in many cases, are permeated by both epistemic and non-epistemic factors (Acevedo-Díaz et al., 2017a; Ahn, 2020).
Non-epistemic values appear, for example, in the practices of classifying elements or phenomena in nature. In this regard, Reydon and Ereshefsky (2022) refer to the notion of ‘biodiversity’, arguing that its content will depend on what is valued to be preserved. The non-epistemic dimension also arises when deciding which set of data to take into account in the testing of a hypothesis (Reydon & Ereshefsky, 2022). For example, there has historically been gender bias in clinical trials evaluating the safety and efficacy of drugs (Sosinsky et al., 2022). This results in the application to women of drugs and medical strategies that were primarily tested in men.
Likewise, non-epistemic values are evident in deciding how to deal with the potential for error in accepting or rejecting hypotheses (Lusk & Elliot, 2022). In this sense, Martin Carrier argues that “Accepting or rejecting a hypothesis in light of data always incurs an ‘inductive risk’ (…) A high threshold level of acceptance reduces the risk of false positives but increases the hazard of false negatives, and vice versa.” (Carrier, 2013, p. 2556). Therefore, weighing the consequences of deciding on the error acceptance threshold is an ethical issue.
Furthermore, in many cases, non-epistemic factors play a key role in scientific assessment. As Elliott and McKaughan (2014) point out, “non-epistemic values can legitimately influence the assessment of scientific representations for practical purposes not only as secondary considerations in situations of uncertainty but also as factors that can take priority over epistemic values” (p. 18). For example, a food safety study might conclude that it is best to label a food as unsafe for human consumption with the slightest suspicion that it may cause disease, even if there is still no conclusive evidence to confirm this. In such cases, what is being applied is a non-epistemic criterion called precautionary principle, which consists of exercising carefulness when a particular finding, product, or technology is suspected of posing a risk to public health or the environment, even if there is not yet definitive scientific evidence of such a risk (Andorno, 2008).
The COVID-19 pandemic has also revealed the influence of non-epistemic aspects (economic investment, scientific patriotism, revision of ethical codes, application of the precautionary principle, etc.) on disease management and vaccine development (Amoretti & Lalumera, 2021; García-Carmona, 2021b). But the history of science is replete with many other cases that highlight the influence of both epistemic and non-epistemic aspects in the construction of scientific knowledge (Acevedo-Díaz & García-Carmona, 2017). For example, in the scientific controversy between Pasteur and Liebig to explain the phenomenon of fermentation, in addition to epistemic factors (interpretations of the phenomenon, experimental methods, creativity and imagination, etc.), governmental political support and socioeconomic impact played an important role in the discussion (García-Carmona & Acevedo-Díaz, 2017). Similarly, the hypothesis of continental drift proposed by the meteorologist Alfred Wegener (1880-1930) was not only rejected for epistemic reasons (questionable research method, and limitations in explaining the causes of continental movements), but non-epistemic factors such as xenophobia and guild issues also influenced (Acevedo-Díaz, 2019). As García Cruz (1996) explains, Wegener’s hypothesis was not well received, especially in the American geological community, because, in addition to not being a geologist (this was seen as professional intrusiveness by geologists at the time), he was German, and Germany had just been defeated in the First World War by countries including the United States.
3.1 Some considerations when introducing non-epistemic aspects of NOS in science education
That said, I think it is necessary to draw attention to two important points regarding the teaching of non-epistemic aspects of NOS. First, the educational goal of understanding the social dimension of science as a part of NOS (meta-knowledge) should not be confused with promoting learning science and its practices through social interaction dynamics (teaching strategy). After much empirical research, there is a broad consensus that the best way to help students learn about NOS is through a pedagogical approach that is both explicit (i.e., with specific learning objectives, activities, and an assessment system) and reflective (i.e., through activities with questions that invite thought and discussion) (Abd-El-Khalick & Lederman, 2023; Acevedo-Díaz, 2009; Lederman, 2007). Thus, the mere fact that students participate collectively or interact socially in the development of a school science activity (implicit approach) does not imply that they necessarily reflect and learn about the role of collaboration in the construction of knowledge and other non-epistemic values involved.
Second, it should not be assumed that addressing the social dimension of science necessarily implies that non-epistemic aspects of NOS are tackled. In fact, some authors only refer to science as a social construction process within the context of epistemic practices (e.g., Kelly, 2008; Kelly & Licona, 2018). Others confine the social dimension of science basically to the processes of communication and evaluation to improve the objectivity of scientific knowledgeFootnote 4 (e.g., Abd-El-Khalick, 2012), which, without further nuances and deepening, is considered an epistemic aspect of NOS (Carrier, 2013; Dagher & Erduran, 2023; Reiss & Sprenger, 2020; Wilholt, 2022). But, as has been pointed out, scientific knowledge is indeed socially constructed within the scientific community, influenced by both epistemic and non-epistemic factors. Therefore, if the latter are to be addressed in science classes (just like epistemic ones), there must be a manifest and explicit intention on the part of the teacher to do so (García-Carmona, 2021a). Table 4 describes as an example how some non-epistemic aspects could be addressed in the framework of science education based on scientific practices.
Finally, it should be noted that the distinction between epistemic and non-epistemic aspects is sometimes difficult, even to the extent that what may be considered a non-epistemic value in one context of scientific practice might be assumed to be epistemic in another context (Reydon & Ereshefsky, 2022). For example, if a model were developed to study the impact of climate change in a region, integrating physical, chemical, biological, geological, and geographic factors with social, political, economic, and cultural ones, when assessing the scientific validity of the model, non-epistemic factors (i.e., those of a socio-economic, political, and cultural nature) would also be part of the rational or cognitive framework to be considered. To explore this issue in more depth, I suggest consulting Ahn (2020) and Rooney (2017) in addition to the authors cited above.
4 Critiques of including non-epistemic aspects in NOS teaching
These have been received mainly from anonymous reviewers who have participated in the review processes of some of our works in which we have argued for greater attention to non-epistemic aspects in NOS teaching.
One of the criticisms of the inclusion of non-epistemic aspects in the NOS teaching is that this implies an increase of aspects of NOS to be taught; something that would make it difficult to integrate this content into already overloaded science curricula. Another criticism is that the non-epistemic aspects are generally easier for students to understand than the epistemic ones. Therefore, attention to the former would imply a certain neglect of the epistemic aspects, which should be prioritized because they are cognitively more complex. However, when we advocate the understanding of non-epistemic aspects of NOS do not suggest that these should replace those of an epistemic nature in NOS teaching proposals. As could not be otherwise, we are strong advocates that understanding the latter is essential for understanding how science works (Acevedo-Díaz et al., 2018; García-Carmona, 2022c; García-Carmona & Acevedo-Díaz, 2017, 2018). What we are saying is that, if only epistemic aspects are addressed, an idealized, therefore biased, unrealistic, and incomplete view of how science works is conveyed to students. The integration of both epistemic and non-epistemic aspects in the teaching/learning of NOS projects a more realistic, balanced, and complete picture of the development of science (García-Carmona & Acevedo-Díaz, 2018). Or, in other words, a more humanistic science education (Klopfer & Aikenhead, 2022; Vázquez-Alonso et al., 2005).
Furthermore, having a framework with a wide range of ideas about NOS, both epistemic and non-epistemic, should not be a problem when planning to teach it. On the contrary, it increases the chances that notions of NOS will be addressed in science classes (Acevedo-Díaz et al., 2017b; García-Carmona, 2022a). Indeed, if science teachers have at their disposal a wide range of NOS ideas to choose from, they can select, at any given moment, those they consider most suitable, relevant, or feasible according to the educational objectives of their curriculum, the science content with which they would integrate them and the characteristics of their students.
5 Today’s dominant approach to teaching NOS: the family resemblance approach
Fortunately, the situation has changed, and non-epistemic aspects are more relevant in current proposals for teaching NOS; at least, according to what has been published in the specialized literature on this subject. In my opinion, this is largely due to the commitment of prestigious and influential academics in research in science education to address the non-epistemic dimension in the NOS teaching. I refer, for example, to Sibel Erduran and colleagues (Erduran & Dagher, 2014; Erduran et al., 2019), who have embraced, promulgated, and adapted, for this purpose, the theoretical framework proposed by Gürol Irzik and Robert Nola, known as the family resemblance approachFootnote 6 (FRA) to NOS (Irzik & Nola, 2011, 2014). Evidence that such a perspective is currently gaining ground in NOS teaching and research can be seen in the number of studies published (Cheung & Erduran, 2023), especially in the journal Science & EducationFootnote 7, but not only in this.
The FRA suggests a holistic view of NOS because it includes, alongside cognitive-epistemic aspects, its non-epistemic side through what is called the social and institutional system of science, which is referred to by Erduran in her article published in Science. This dimension of NOS comprises professional activities, scientific ethos, social certification, social values, organizational, political, and financial aspects of science (Erduran & Dagher, 2014).Footnote 8 In a recent improvement review of the FRA to NOS, Irzik and Nola emphasized that one of the basic pillars of this approach is that
Science is not merely an epistemic inquiry into the workings of nature (…). It is at the same time a social institution with its own sites of knowledge production, ethical norms of conduct, peer review system, incentive structure, reward and punishment mechanism, and financial sources of funding. (…) the distinction between the cognitive-epistemic and the social is an analytical one introduced for the purpose of conceptual clarity. These two components of science are distinguishable but not separable. Both are needed for a comprehensive picture of science. (Irzik & Nola, 2023, pp. 1228-1229)
However, it should be noted that when Irzik and Nola first developed the FRA to NOS (Irzik & Nola, 2011), they did not explicitly mention the ‘non-epistemic aspects’ of NOS. It has been in their recent improved version of this theoretical framework that they directly talk about them by the expression ‘non-epistemic values’ (Irzik & Nola, 2023). Thus, in expounding the virtues of the FRA, Irzik and Nola state that “A significant part of what it means to say that science is socially embedded is to say that non-epistemic (social, political, economic, ethical, ideological and so on) values are operative in science and influence it”. (2023, p. 1233).
6 Other approaches that also integrate non-epistemic aspects in NOS teaching
However, with all scientific milestones, there are antecedents that deserve to be acknowledged as well. Therefore, it is only fair to highlight those other protagonists who, with an argumentative basis at least as strong as that of the FRA, had already argued that the non-epistemic dimension should receive significant attention in NOS teaching research. In this vindictive spirit, in 2016, my colleague José Antonio Acevedo-Díaz and I wrote an article in Spanish entitled “Algo antiguo, algo nuevo, algo prestado”. Tendencias sobre la naturaleza de la ciencia en la educación científica [‘Something old, something new, something borrowed’. Trends on the nature of science in science education] (Acevedo-Díaz & García-Carmona, 2016).
In this article, we begin by acknowledging the significant contribution of the Lederman group to the advancement of NOS teaching; although we also point out the limitations of their framework.Footnote 9 Likewise, we highlight the relevance and potential of the FRA to holistic NOS teaching with particular reference to Erduran and Dagher (2014) book, Reconceptualizing the nature of science for science education, in which they claim the FRA, and which appears at a time when Lederman’s proposal was still quite prevalent. However, we also claim the contributions of other authors who, before or around the same time, had also proposed to give explicit relevance to the non-epistemic dimension of NOS, even though these have not achieved the international impact that we now see with the FRA to NOS teaching.
In particular, we refer to the contribution of the STS tradition, as it has integrated, from the beginning, all those aspects that are now claimed for a better understanding of NOS (Acevedo-Díaz & García-Carmona, 2016). Indeed, for some authors, NOS is considered an important component of STS (Aikenhead, 2003; Pedretti & Nazir, 2011). As Alsop and Gardner (2017) wrote, “The original thrust of the NOS movement was a provocation to open up the black box of science in science education, predominantly following academic traditions in STS.” (p. 28). Furthermore, these authors argued from the STS studies that “NOS needs to take much more seriously sociopolitical contexts of its own formations and embrace wider contemporary social and ecological imbalances, precarities, and injustices.” (Alsop & Gardner, 2017, p. 27). Consistent with this, and within the framework of NOS teaching for social justice, Zoubeida R. Dagher recognizes the potential of STS(E) education for the successful development of FRA to NOS when she states that
Used in conjunction with a Science, Technology, Society and the Environment (STSE) or place-based education where personal, local or global issues become sites for anchoring science explorations, the FRA gives teachers license and tools to embed some of the FRA components in the instructional context. (Dagher, 2020, p. 52)
It would be too long to develop here the different theoretical proposals that suggest including attention to non-epistemic aspects in the NOS teaching. So, in what follows, I will only refer briefly to those that seem to me to have been most relevant on the way towards a more holistic teaching of NOS with the integration of non-epistemic aspects alongside those of an epistemic nature.
One of the most important contributions in defense of the integration of non-epistemic aspects in the understanding of NOS is that of Glen Aikenhead and colleagues that they published more than 30 years ago (Aikenhead et al., 1989; Aikenhead & Ryan, 1992). In their Views on Science-Technology-Society (VOSTS) framework, these authors proposed, in addition to understanding aspects of the epistemology of science, two key non-epistemic dimensions for understanding the NOS: external sociology of science (funding, science policy, scientific societies, social responsibility of scientists, resolution of social and practical problems, moral and legal decisions, contribution to social thinking, etc.) and internal sociology of science (personal motivations, values and ideologies of scientists, gender effects on the production of science, scientific competition, social interactions and collectivization, scientific decisions, etc.). This framework of ideas on NOS, framed in the STS tradition, has then been adapted and validated for the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking contexts (e.g., Acevedo-Díaz et al., 2005, 2017b; Bennàssar et al., 2010; Vázquez-Alonso et al., 2006, 2013, 2014) and for the Turkish context (Dikmentepe & Yakar, 2016). It can be said that the two sociological dimensions of VOSTS integrate most non-epistemic aspects that make up the social and institutional system dimension of the FRA to NOS.
In the literature there are also other proposals for teaching NOS that are in tune with the STS framework and include non-epistemic aspects. An emblematic contribution is the one published in 2011 by Douglas Allchin under the title Evaluating knowledge of the nature of (whole) science (Allchin, 2011). With a direct critique of the framework by Lederman and colleagues for the teaching of NOS,Footnote 10 Allchin proposes as an alternative a more comprehensive teaching and evaluation of NOS, ranging from the experimental to the social.Footnote 11 To this end, he suggests a framework that includes, along with several epistemic dimensions, the following non-epistemic dimensions: human context (motivations for doing science and personalities of scientists), culture (gender and racial biases, ideology, and religious beliefs of scientists), social interactions between scientists, and economics/finance.
Also noteworthy is Michael Matthews’ proposal under the name of features of science (FOS) (Matthews, 2012). In his rationale, this author criticizes the limitations of the prevailing proposals for teaching NOS, including Lederman’s, and suggests that proposals should be made that are better informed by the history and philosophy of science. In this sense, Matthews adds various aspects to those included in the proposal by the Lederman group, among which the following non-epistemic ones are explicitly cited: values and socioscientific issues, worldviews and religion, and feminism.
The proposal by André Ferrer P. Martins also deserves to be mentioned (Martins, 2015), which was published in Portuguese in an article entitled Natureza da Ciência no ensino de ciências: uma proposta baseada em “temas” e “questões” [Nature of science in science education: a proposal based on ‘themes’ and ‘questions’]. Martins’ proposal is based on two interrelated but different major axes for the discussion of NOS themes. The first axis of a markedly non-epistemic nature is called sociological and historical, which includes aspects such as role of individuals/subjects and the scientific community; intersubjectivity; historical and social influences; moral, ethical, and political issues; science as part of a wider culture; historical and contemporary controversies in science; etc. The other axis is denominated epistemological that focusses on role of observation and experimentation; empirical vs. theoretical origin of scientific knowledge; methods/processes of science; laws, models, and theories; evaluation of theories; etc.
7 Final comment
In short, the visibility that non-epistemic aspects are acquiring in current proposals for the NOS teaching, which are mainly framed by the FRA, is undoubtedly great news that deserves to be celebrated because it humanizes science, with all that this entails. Therefore, it is only fair to recognize its main architects. But it is also fair to vindicate those other contributions that, without having achieved as much impact as the FRA to NOS teaching, have, in some way, favored the achievement of this milestone in this line of research. One of these contributions is the framework of the STS tradition, whose influence on approaches to teaching NOS has been more noticeable in the Ibero-American than in the Anglo-Saxon sphere. In the aforementioned article, my colleague and I wrote:
The STS tradition for science education has also evolved from its origins, but its field of action in recent years has had almost no presence in English-speaking countries, but rather in the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking countries of Ibero-America, where its contributions to research on NOS in science education have been (and continue to be) abundant and frequent (Acevedo-Díaz & García-Carmona, 2016, p. 14).
That said, it should not be forgotten that there is still a long way to go before NOS is consolidated in the science curricula of many countries (Olson, 2018), including Spain (García-Carmona, 2021c, 2022b). Therefore, every effort must be made to ensure that such progress in approaches to NOS teaching transcends into science classes.
Notes
Throughout this article, the terms “aspect(s)”, “factor(s)” and “value(s)” will be used interchangeably to refer to approaches, strategies, behaviors, actions, or decisions that can be categorized as rational (i.e., epistemic) or non-rational (i.e., non-epistemic) in the development of science.
Imre Lakatos stated that “Most scientists tend to understand little more about science than fish do about hydrodynamics” (Lakatos, 1974, cited in Osborne, 2017, p. 54).
Later, Lederman and colleagues also developed the views about scientific inquiry (VASI) framework (Lederman et al., 2014) to complement their proposal for NOS (or rather NOSK) teaching. However, unlike other more holistic frameworks on the nature of scientific practice (e.g., García-Carmona & Acevedo-Díaz, 2018), the VASI is entirely focused on the epistemic perspective of scientific activity.
Indeed, Fernández et al. (2022) warn that care should be taken in addressing science as a socially constructed human activity in order not to fall into naïve epistemic relativism (Abd-El-Khalick, 2001) that encourages the belief that the reliability of scientific knowledge is questionable. To prevent this, Romero-Maltrana et al. (2019) suggest paying special attention to the empirical and objective nature of science. However, all this would require a more in-depth discussion that I will not address here. For this purpose, I suggest reading, for example, the essays by Matthews (2004, 2022).
In short and building on the original idea of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1967), this approach suggests that while each scientific discipline has its particularities, there are several characteristics and practices that are common to all disciplines within the broad field of science. As anecdotal information, Wittgenstein introduced the notion of ‘family resemblance’ using ‘games’ as an example, analyzing the common and specific aspects of different games (Wittgenstein, 1967, notes 66-67).
See the monograph published in 2023 by the journal Science & Education (Volume 32, Issue 5) on recent developments in the FRA for teaching NOS: https://link.springer.com/journal/11191/volumes-and-issues/32-5
An interesting proposal for integrating aspects related to economics and entrepreneurship in science into the school science curriculum can be found in Kaya et al. (2018).
A subsequent, extensively developed, constructive, and multilayered critique of Lederman’s approach to teaching NOS can be found in the 2017 monograph published in the Canadian Journal of Science, Mathematics and Technology Education (Volume 17, Issue 1): https://link.springer.com/journal/42330/volumes-and-issues/17-1
Lederman and colleagues wrote an article in response to Allchin’s criticism in the same journal (Schwartz et al., 2012).
Years earlier, Allchin had already reflected that science is not value-free, distinguishing between epistemic values and cultural (or non-epistemic) values, and argued that a reflective approach to both in science classrooms can improve students’ understanding of NOS (Allchin, 1999).
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Funding for open access publishing: Universidad de Sevilla/CBUA. This work is part of a project funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 (Government of Spain) under Grant PID2022-137471NB-I00.
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To the memory of José Antonio Acevedo-Díaz, who so much defended the balanced approach of epistemic and non-epistemic aspects in NOS teaching.
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García-Carmona, A. The non-epistemic dimension, at last a key component in mainstream theoretical approaches to teaching the nature of science. Sci & Educ (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11191-024-00495-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11191-024-00495-2