Toward a Questionnaire to Assess Biology Student Teachers’ Knowledge of the Nature of Scientific Inquiry (NOSI)

Abstract

Knowledge about the nature of scientific inquiry (NOSI) is not only an integral part of scientific literacy, but also essential for living and working as responsible citizens in the twenty-first century, and facing the danger of “fake science”. Although various NOSI instruments already exist, they primarily focus either on a different target group, i.e. pupils, place their content-related emphasis on experimentation, and/or are based on open-ended or multiple-choice testing response formats. To address this instrument gap, a closed-ended questionnaire with a dichotomous and a post-decision confidence rating response scale was developed and tested to evaluate the respondents’ understanding of eight NOSI aspects in a detailed yet economical manner. 148 German freshman biology student teachers participated in a sequential cross-sectional pilot study. First results indicate acceptable instrument reliability. There are certain items that seem to be answered correctly rather by coincidence or test intelligence, whereas others seem to suggest participants’ naïve NOSI views, or NOSI misconceptions. These findings imply that there is a need to further explore biology student teachers’ NOSI understanding to improve future university teaching. Moreover, further validity analyses for the newly developed testing instrument should be performed.