Nature of Scientific Knowledge and Scientific Inquiry: Building Instructional Capacity Through Professional Development

Abstract

Currently, four reviews focus on the research on students’ and teachers’ conceptions of nature of scientific knowledge, as well as approaches to improving teachers’ and students’ conceptions. The research related to students’ and teachers’ knowledge about scientific inquiry (as distinct from the ability to undertake inquiry) is quite rare. Students’ and teachers’ conceptions of nature of scientific knowledge have been important goals of science education for over 100 years. Attention to understandings about inquiry and about nature of scientific knowledge is much more recent and is primarily attributed to the National Science Education Standards and Benchmarks for Science Literacy in the USA. Rather than reiterate the research that does exist, the purpose of this chapter is to focus on the role of professional development in facilitating the desired change in students’ and teachers’ conceptions (i.e. how to help teachers to translate what they know into effective classroom practices). The existing literature reviews do not document the nature and impacts of sustained professional development in bringing about the change. This chapter focuses on several large-scale professional development approaches (i.e. teacher enhancement grant, systemic change initiative, programmatic emphases) that our group has used in Chicago. Of particular importance is the relative impacts of these different approaches and the lessons learned about the nature of the professional development that we provide. Naturally, the existing research on students’ and teachers’ conceptions, and how they are changed is briefly reviewed to provide context, but not to the point of just reiterating what has already been presented elsewhere. But, the primary focus of the chapter is on the necessary professional development provided to teachers so they can translate their knowledge into forms that are readily understood by the students.