Thesis (MFA )--Montana State University--Bozeman, 2008. / Typescript. Trouble in the tropics: invasive lionfish is a DVD accompanying the thesis. Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Dennis Aig. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 51-53).

abstract: An understanding of the Nature of Science (NOS) remains a fundamental goal of science education in the Unites States. A developed understanding of NOS provides a framework in which to situate science knowledge. Secondary science teachers play a critical role in providing students with an introduction to understanding NOS. Unfortunately, due to the high turnover rates of secondary science teachers in the United States, this critical role is often filled by relatively novice teachers. These beginning secondary science teachers make instructional decisions regarding science that are drawn from their emerging knowledge base, including a tentative understanding of NOS. This tentative knowledge can be affected by environment and culture of the classroom, school, and district in which beginning teachers find themselves. When examining NOS among preservice and beginning teachers the background and demographics of the teachers are often ignored. These teachers are treated as a homogenous block in terms of their initial understanding of NOS. This oversight potentially ignores interactions that may happen over time as teachers cross the border from college students, preservice teachers, and scientists into the classroom environment. Through Symbolic Interactionism we can explain how teachers change in order to adapt to their new surroundings and how this adaptation may be detrimental to their understanding of NOS and ultimately to their practice. 63 teachers drawn from a larger National Science Foundation (NSF) funded study were interviewed about their understanding of NOS over three years. Several demographic factors including college major, preservice program, number of History and Philosophy of Science classes, and highest academic degree achieve were shown to have an affect on the understanding of NOS over time. In addition, over time, the teachers tended to 'converge' in their understanding of NOS regardless of preservice experiences or induction support. Both the affect of different demographics amongst teachers and the 'converging' aspect of their understanding of NOS provide much needed insight for teacher trainers, mentors, and researchers. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Curriculum and Instruction 2011

Magister Educationis - MEd (Mathematics and Science Education) / A large percentage of South African learners held inadequate or alternative conceptions that might hinder them from developing a valid understanding of various scientific concepts and generalizations. This study explored the conceptions of Senior Phase learners on magnetism, chemical change of substances and the environment. More explicitly, the study attempted to investigate the influence of the learners" age, language and gender issues on their understanding of these scientific concepts. The study is underpinned by socio-cultural constructivism as espoused by Vygotsky (1978). The research sample comprised 250 Senior Phase learners (grades eight and nine) from secondary schools in the Metro Central District in the Western Cape. The study used the following six research instruments for data collection: Science Achievement Test (SAT), Context Test, Cloze Test, Picture Test, Science Vocabulary Test and an interview schedule. The tests were administered to all the participants while the interview was conducted with six participants.This study was a descriptive research of a survey type and data was collected and analyzed using both quantitative and qualitative methods.The data collected was analyzed quantitatively using the Statistical Package for Sciences (SPSS) in order to obtain descriptive statistics that were used to explore the conceptions of senior phase learners in magnetism, chemical change substances and the environment in the Metro Central district while data from the tape recorder and notes taken during the interview, were analyzed qualitatively.

No description available.

The purpose of this exploratory qualitative study was to investigate the practice of scientific inquiry in two secondary biology classes and one agriculture class from different schools in different communities. The focus was on teachers' interests and intentions for the students' participation in inquiry, the voices contributing to the inquiry, and students' opportunities to confront their conceptions of the nature of science (NOS). The Partnership for Research and Education in Plants (PREP) served as the context by providing students with opportunities to design and conduct original experiments to help elucidate the function(s) of a disabled gene in Arabidopsis thaliana. Transcripts of teacher and student semi-structured interviews, field notes of classroom observations and classroom conversations, and documents (e.g., student work, teacher handouts, school websites, PREP materials) were analyzed for evidence of the practice of scientific inquiry. Teachers were interested in implementing inquiry because of potential student learning about scientific research and because PREP supports course content and is connected to a larger scientific project outside of the school. Teachers' intentions regarding the implementation of inquiry reflected the complexity of their courses and the students' previous experiences. All inquiries were student-directed. The biology students' participation more closely mirrored the practice of scientists, while the agriculture students were more involved with the procedural display of scientific inquiry. All experiences could have been enhanced from additional knowledge-centered activities regarding scientific reasoning. No activities brought explicit attention to NOS. Biology activities tended to implicitly support NOS while the agriculture class activities tended to implicitly contradict NOS. Scientists' interactions contributed to implied support of the NOS. There were missed opportunities for explicit attention to NOS in all classes. The major voices contributing to the inquiry in all classrooms included those of teachers, students, technology, scientists, textbooks, and mandated standards; however, they were more prevalent in the biology classrooms than the agriculture classroom. The powers influencing the voice frequency may be related to the teachers' own teaching and research experiences, as well as the alignment of the expectations and values of students' participation in scientific inquiry and those associated with the school-classroom communities and the students' identities. / Ph. D.

In this study, the effects of an explicit reflective intervention on Swaziland elementary preservice teachers’ understanding of the Nature of Science (NOS) were investigated. The factors that had an impact on the development of participants’ NOS views were also investigated. The intervention made use of de-contextualized and contextualized activities as well as historical narratives as contexts for reflecting about the empirical, creative, subjective as well as the tentative NOS. The intervention included a discussion of the relationships and differences between observations and inferences as well as scientific laws and theories in the context of the aforementioned learning activities. Participants were 24 elementary pre-service teachers enrolled for their final year of their three year teacher development programme. An adapted version of the Views of Nature of Science Questionnaire-Form C (VNOS-C) was used in conjunction with individual interviews, to assess the participants’ understanding of NOS at the beginning and conclusion of the intervention. At the end of the programme, data from interviews, concept maps and reflective journals of seven participants were analysed to ascertain their perceptions of the elements of the course and other factors that had an impact on their development of more informed NOS views. These participants were selected on the basis of their differential gains in NOS understanding. The data that was analysed using both qualitative and quantitative techniques revealed that the intervention brought about significant gains in some participants’ understanding of NOS. Information obtained from the document analysis of journals and concept maps as well as exit interviews of the selected group revealed that the pre-service teachers’ development of more informed views was mediated by motivational and cognitive factors. These were the participants’ perception of the value of teaching and learning NOS, their views about teaching and learning science, and their ability to engage deeply with the NOS concepts as well as their epistemic beliefs. The explicit reflective attention to NOS as well as metacognitive strategies was reported by most of the selected participants as responsible for changes in their NOS views. / Dissertation (MEd)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / gm2014 / Science, Mathematics and Technology Education / unrestricted

Nature of Science (NOS) har varit i utbildares och forskares blickfång länge. Elevers kunskaper är av intresse att analysera eftersom det kan bidra till en utveckling av lärares undervisning och förståelse av lärandeprocesser i no-ämnena. Syftet med studien var att analysera hur elever i årskurs 4 ser på vad som är en vetenskaplig undersökning och ett experiment. Den data som används i studien består av redan insamlade frågeformulär från 2019. Studiens data analyseras genom en innehållsanalys. Resultatet visar att elevers kunskaper om undersökningar och experiment är varierande. Eleverna ger exempel på att undersökningar kan innefatta att antingen titta först och sedan ställa en fråga eller tvärtom och att ett experiment kan innebära att blanda eller att prova sig fram. Lärare kan utveckla sin undervisning genom att exempelvis använda elevnära innehåll som eleven känner igen och kan relatera till eller använda modeller och metoder för att visa på systematik och underbyggda slutsatser för att bidra till en högre förståelse om naturvetenskaplig kunskap hos eleverna.

No description available.

This study investigated whether participation in the Partnership for Research and Education in Plants (PREP), a long-term authentic plant research project, in conjunction with explicit verses implicit instruction can change high school students' conceptions of the nature of science (NOS). The participants included a total of 134 students comprised of three groups from 10 total classes over the course of two academic years. Participants in four classes (two each year) participated in PREP and received explicit instruction on NOS. Participants in four other classes (two each year) participated in PREP and received implicit only instruction on NOS. Additionally, two classes (one each year) of high-achieving freshmen participated in PREP and received explicit instruction on NOS. This third group was used as a comparative group to the other two groups, due to their high achievement in middle school math and science. The treatment for all three groups spanned 8 weeks and included participation in an authentic plant research project. An open-ended questionnaire (modified Views of Nature of Science - VNOS), in conjunction with semi-structured interviews, was used to assess students' conceptions before and after the intervention. Results showed that all three groups improved their conceptions of NOS equally. The high-achieving group began with significantly higher-scoring views prior to the completion of the intervention, and improved to the same degree as the other two groups. A comparison of the explicit group to the implicit only group showed that there was no significant difference in their improvement, as both groups improved equally. Implications for the teaching and learning of NOS are discussed.

This study investigates learners‟ understandings of the nature of scientific inquiry (NOSI) in relation to their classroom experiences. Using the constructs of nature of scientific inquiry; inquiry-based teaching and learning; and principles of scientific inquiry as theoretical lenses, the study empirically explored learners‟ (n = 120) understandings of the nature of scientific inquiry which were captured through a questionnaire called Learners‟ understanding of science and scientific inquiry (LUSSI) and interviews and their perceptions of classroom inquiry (their experiences of inquiry were elicited through a questionnaire called Principles of scientific inquiry- student (PSI-S) and interviews). The participants were one hundred and twenty learners, 60 from each of two schools in an Education District in Lesotho. Eight learners, four from each school participated in the interviews. At the centre, the investigation sought to understand whether there was any relationship between learners‟ perceptions of their experiences of scientific inquiry and their understandings of the nature of scientific inquiry. As a result, this study was guided by the following questions: what are learners‟ understandings of the nature of scientific inquiry? What are learners‟ perceptions of their experiences of scientific inquiry? Are learners‟ understandings of NOSI in any way related to their experiences of scientific inquiry? Typological approach was used to analyse the qualitative data and descriptive statistics for analysing the quantitative data. The results of this study suggest that learners hold less informed understandings of the nature of scientific inquiry and that learners are experiencing closed-inquiry in their science classroom. The results also show that other learners‟ experiences of scientific inquiry are not related to their understandings of the nature of scientific inquiry. It was recommended that teachers should engage learners in inquiry activities rather than always carrying out teacher-demonstrations. It is also recommended that further studies should be done in Lesotho to examine the relationship between learners‟ understandings of NOSI and their perceptions of their classroom experiences.