To the degree that the background and abilities of the participants in the previous and
present investigations are comparable, the results of this temporal separation appear promising.
In general, the preservice teachers no longer confused scienti®c processes with aspects of the
nature of science. In addition, they clearly understood, with few exceptions, the importance of
explicit instruction when attempting to help students develop an understanding of the nature of
science. Indeed, most of the participants in this investigation fared better than those in our
previous investigation in terms of teaching the nature of science explicitly. Furthermore,
participants who did not teach the nature of science were aware of the situation and emphasized
the importance of using explicit techniques when teaching the nature of science.