Obviously all studies cannot be reviewed here, but doing so would simply confirm what the cited assessments of students’ conceptions have indicated.
As will be seen later, studies that have attempted to change students’ views also document students’ “starting points” as consistent with what has just been described.
Research on students’ conceptions of science was a natural extension of the agreement among educators and scientists that promoting accurate students’ understandings of NOS should be a primary objective of science education.
The overwhelming conclusion that students did not possess adequate conceptions of the nature of science or scientific reasoning is considered particularly significant when one realizes that a wide variety of assessment instruments were used throughout the aforementioned research.
Although evidence does exist that casts some doubt on the validity and reliability of some of the instruments used (Hukins, 1963), it is significant that all investigations yielded the same findings.
A detailed analysis of these assessment instruments is included in a subsequent section of this review.