This article reports on the effect of textbook analysis as a tool of teacher professional development on nature of science (NOS) understanding of 10 science teachers in South Africa. The teacher professional development program (TPDP) was based on an explicit reflective methodology of textbook analysis and conducted online due to the Covid-induced lockdown. NOS understanding of the participant teachers was documented pre-training and post-training using a questionnaire designed by the researchers, termed the IFVNOS questionnaire. This tool was formulated based on the views of nature of science questionnaire version C (VNOSC) and the reconceptualised family resemblance approach (RFN) questionnaire. The same tool was used pre- and post-training. A comparison was made of the pre- and post-training results and it was found that there was a general individual increase in NOS understanding in 9 of the 10 teachers. The creative, scientific knowledge, science methods and ethical practices NOS aspects showed the greatest improvement in understanding by the teachers as a collective, whilst inferential NOS showed no overall change in understanding. This study showed that textbook analysis can be used as a professional development tool to improve NOS understanding of in-service science teachers.
"The study describes the development of a lesson observation schedule, to document Science teacher pedagogical content knowledge for nature of science (PCKNOS) and a subsequent pilot study to test the instrument. The objective of the study was to develop an observation schedule that could document enacted PCKNOS. NOS refers to the epistemology and sociology of science, science as a way of knowing and understanding the natural world, and the role of values and beliefs of the scientific community in the development of scientific knowledge (Lederman, 1998; Lederman and Lederman, 2004). Shulman (1986) has defined pedagogical content knowledge as the intersection of the knowledge a teacher has of the subject material (content) and the translation of that knowledge into an accessible format for the learners (pedagogy). The ability of teachers to transform their understanding of NOS into a context suitable to facilitate student learning of NOS is known as PCK for NOS (Faikhamta, 2013). This PCK refers to a teacher’s knowledge of which NOS aspects can be addressed in the teaching of science topics, an appropriate selection of instructional material or media and the correct use of metaphors, analogies or other pedagogical tools (Haunscin, Lee, & Akerson, 2011). According to literature, paper methodologies such as content representation and the pedagogical and professional experience repertoires (Betram and Loughran, 2011) are commonly used to measure science teachers’ planned or espoused PCK. This study aimed to measure enacted PCK through lesson observation. The researcher developed a lesson observation schedule based on Aydeniz and Kirbulut’s (2014) instrument to measure pre-service science teachers’ topic specific PCK and included NOS aspects as presented in curriculum documents for science education. The schedule was piloted on two teachers through analyzing recorded lessons as the study was carried out during COVID-19 lockdown in 2020. Two raters were used to document teacher PCKNOS using the schedule and it was found to be suitable to measure PCKNOS."
The study describes the development of an instrument to measure the Nature of Science (NOS) understandings in high school Science teachers. The instrument was initially piloted on two high school teachers in South Africa, one teaching Life Sciences and the other Physical Sciences. It was subsequently used to measure NOS understanding in 10 high school Science teachers in South Africa over 6 months in 2021. The objective of the study was to construct a questionnaire that could measure NOS understanding based on the Family Resemblance Approach (FRA) and the Consensus View (CV). The NOS is a construct that has been defined by various scholars and there exist multiple perspectives. For this study, two perspectives that define NOS, the CV of Abd-El-Khalick and the Reconceptualised Family Resemblance (RFN) approach to NOS of Erduran and Dagher were considered. To collect data on NOS understanding, the researcher compared the Views of Nature of Science (VNOS) instrument used to capture NOS understanding under the CV, and the RFN questionnaire used to capture NOS understanding under FRA and compiled an Integrated Family Views of Nature of Science (IFVNOS) questionnaire. The findings revealed that the IFVNOS questionnaire developed can be used as a reliable tool to measure NOS understanding.
The study describes the development of an instrument, to measure NOS understandings of science teachers and a subsequent pilot study to test the instrument. The pilot measured NOS understanding of two teachers using a questionnaire that had been developed by the researcher. The objective of the study was to construct a questionnaire that could measure NOS understanding based on the family resemblance approach (FRA). The NOS is a construct that has been defined by various scholars and there exists multiple perspectives. For this study, two schools of thought defining the nature of science: the consensus view (CV) and the reconceptualized family resemblance approach to NOS (RFN) were considered. The CV has been widely accepted for years to represent the NOS through its tenets, and there exists reliable tools to document NOS. Based on the CV researchers developed an instrument, views of nature of science (VNOS), to document NOS understanding. In the past decade, scholars have challenged the CV of NOS and highlighted shortcomings in its tenets. FRA was developed that depicts science in a holistic system with dynamic interactions unlike the CV that represents NOS as independent tenets. From FRA, emerged RFN consisting of social and cultural categories that affect how science is done. The approach of RFN due to its holistic approach will be preferred in this study. The authors of RFN developed a RFN questionnaire to assess views about NOS using a Likert scale. Due to the limitations of the Likert scale, an open-ended approach is preferred in the qualitative analysis of views of NOS as is found in the VNOS form. To collect data on NOS understanding, the researcher compared VNOS and the RFN questionnaire and developed an integrated family VNOS (IFVNOS) questionnaire. The IFVNOS questionnaire was administered in a pilot test followed by interviews to elaborate on responses. The responses were analysed by two coders and triangulated to ensure reliability. The responses were allocated codes to document NOS understanding, on a range from naïve to explicit understanding. The findings revealed that the IFVNOS questionnaire developed can be used as a tool to measure NOS understanding and more testing is required to assess reliability.
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