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ABSTRACT:In this article, the Greek primary school teachers' understanding of three current environmental issues (acid rain, the ozone layer depletion, and the greenhouse effect) as well as the emerging images of nature were examined. The study revealed that teachers held several environmental knowledge gaps and misconceptions about the three phenomena. Using the media as major environmental information sources, in which environmental issues are constructed as environmental risks, teachers are being environmentally educated in lay and not in scientific terms. Moreover, the image of nature emerging from their ideas about the three environmental issues is that of the romantic archetype, which prevails in postindustrial societies. Such a view, though, gives a conceptualization of nature as balance, under which the greenhouse effect and acid rain are seen as exclusively human-induced "disturbances."

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ABSTRACT:The present essay examines the emerging issue of domain-general versus domain-specific nature of science (NOS) understandings from a perspective that illuminates the value of domain-specific philosophies of science for the growth and development of the NOS educational field. Under the assumption that individual sciences do have their own character, we address the unique ontological, methodological, and epistemological features of Newtonian physics and evolutionary biology and we articulate the important differences that exist between the worldviews associated with these scientific fields, namely, the Newtonian and the neo-Darwinian scientific worldviews. The former worldview is consistent in many respects with assumptions that are grounded on positivism, whereas the latter worldview provides an alternative understanding of NOS, which is predominately based in the techniques of hermeneutics and historical sciences. We subsequently attempt to present the current inadequacies and weaknesses that the NOS field is challenged with as a result of not incorporating the differences between the Newtonian and neo-Darwinian worldviews into its research or instructional agenda. In addition, we outline the heuristic power for the NOS field that may accompany a potential shift from a homogeneous view of NOS to a view more informed by the specificities of any particular science or scientific field.