The main aim of this study was to investigate the effect of an explicit activity based NOS
instruction. The results of this study are consistent with the previous studies (Abd-El-Khalick &
Lederman, 2000a; Akerson et al., 2000; Gess-Newsome, 2002; Schwartz et al., 2004;
Windschitl, 2003), which investigated the effect of explicit approach on teachers’ conceptions
about NOS. It was determined that this approach was effective in enhancing PSTs’ NOS
conceptions, which were mostly naïve or mixed at the beginning of the instruction.
At the beginning of instruction the majority of PSTs held naïve conceptions about;
relationships and functions of scientific theories and laws; social and cultural influences on
science; the inventive character of science and the relationships between science and technology.
For the other aspects of NOS, such as definition of science, scientific theories, tentative NOS,
theory-laden, creativity and imagination in science and differences between observation and
inference, they had mixed views, which were neither informed nor naïve. However, they did not
have informed conceptions for any aspect of NOS at the beginning of instruction.
At the end of the instruction, they changed their naïve or mixed conceptions toward
informed conceptions regarding the most investigated aspects of NOS. However, their
conceptions did not change regarding social and cultural influences on science, creativity and
imagination in science, and the inventive character of science aspects of NOS. It was also found
that all changes were statistically significant as indicated by the nonparametric Wilcoxon test.
Consistent with the results of Abd-El-Khalick and Lederman (2000b), it was found that it is
easier to change mixed views, which were partially informed, than naïve views toward informed
views.
There is inconsistency between the results of this study and the results of previous studies
(Celik & Bayrakceken, 2006) in regard to Turkish PSTs’ conceptions about the tentative feature
of scientific knowledge. It was reported that the majority of prospective teachers had informed
conceptions about the tentative aspect of scientific knowledge. But, in this study, it was found
that the majority of PSTs did not have informed conceptions about this aspect of NOS. This
difference might be the result of interpreting conceptions of participants in only one context
versus in many different contexts. In this study, even though the majority of PSTs articulated
that scientific knowledge is tentative, they also thought that scientific theories might change but
scientific laws don’t when they answered the question about the relationships between scientific
theories and laws. This dilemma in their responses indicated that they did not have informed
conceptions about this aspect of NOS at the beginning of the instruction.
It was found that PSTs were reluctant to change some naïve conceptions about social and
cultural influences on science, imagination and creativity in science and inventive character of
science, even though many explicit discussions took place during the instruction on these naïve
conceptions, either after their project’ presentations or the lectures.
To overcome the challenges to enhance some deep-rooted naïve understandings, there is a
need for more developed activities to be used in teacher education or science education. As
suggested (Abd-El-Khalick & Lederman, 2000b), some cooperation among science educators,
historians of science and other scientists to develop well-matched historical narratives about
science along with any NOS instruction, are imperative. Most importantly, NOS instructions
should be extended to the all programs of teacher education. During this study, the mostly stated
desire of the PSTs was that those kinds of activities, or courses should have been presented to
them thorough their training starting at the beginning.
The observations during the course confirmed that only doing science couldn’t develop
understandings about NOS. Some critical components such as explicit opportunities for
reflections and authentic context for scientific inquiry should be incorporated to ensure
development of NOS conceptions (Schwartz et al., 2004). In this study, educational research
projects provided authentic context. This context enabled PSTs to collect and analyse data,
construct explanations and express these explanations both written and verbally. Inquiry context
was used to lead reflection. During this process, they were guided toward linking these
experiences to NOS explicitly in classes and outside of class discussions. Educational inquiry
projects, which were mostly related to NOS and science teaching, were intentionally chosen to
confront PSTs to different conceptions about NOS and science teaching, and to compare these
understandings with their understandings. Moreover, the project based learning approach was
used to model NOS teaching to PSTs.
This study model might be guidance for teachers to use similar model in their instruction
for effective science teaching, which incorporates doing inquiry, understandings about inquiry,
and teaching inquiry. But only one attempt during the entire teachers’ education will certainly
not guarantee that teacher will almost adjust this model to their science teaching. For more
effective outcomes, they should be confronted with the same model into many different contexts.
They should experience inquiry activities along NOS instruction in courses such as chemistry,
biology, physics, and other science areas. First of all, prospective teachers should be given
chances to express their NOS understandings in instructions.
This study was not designed to investigate the effect of the instruction on their
applications as professionals. In addition, it was not designed to determine which component of
the instruction; whether authentic inquiry experiences; explicit discussions; or the teaching
approach pursued in course, affected PSTs’ NOS understandings. These were the main
limitations of this study.