The Inclusion of the Nature of Science in Nine Recent International Science Education Standards Documents

Olson, Joanne K.

doi:10.1007/s11191-018-9993-8

Cited by 72 publications

(61 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…Höttecke and Silva () and more recently Olson () voiced concern about standards that lack a clear connection to NOS in the student expectations, regardless of representations elsewhere in the document. To begin to address the gaping hole in addressing NOS in most standards documents across the United States, the NGSS need to include performance indicators related to NOS on par with other core disciplinary knowledge, practices, and crosscutting concepts deemed important for K‐12 students to learn and master.…”

Section: Implications and Recommendationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Representations of nature of science in U.S. science standards: A historical account with contemporary implications

et al. 2019

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This study evaluated the representations of nature of science (NOS) in U.S. state science standards, and examined the changes in these representations from documents advanced in the 1980s through 2016. Drawing from the consensus perspective on NOS and prior studies focusing on the analysis of textual content, documents were inspected for 10 target NOS aspects: the empirical, tentative, inferential, creative, theory-driven, and social NOS, in addition to the myth of "The Scientific Method," the nature of scientific theories and laws, and the social and cultural embeddedness of science.Ninety-eight state documents from 48 states were analyzed and multiple editions were collected from 34 states. Additionally, relevant materials from the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) were assessed for their coverage of the same NOS aspects. Collected materials were scored as whole documents, including over 11,000 pages of text in total, on each target aspect, which reflected the treatment (naïve vs. informed) of NOS in text and the manner of presentation (explicit vs. implicit). Overall, surprisingly, state standards documents have improved very little with respect to their NOS coverage over the last 30 years. NOS standards documents remain silent on a majority of key aspects of NOS, and the number of aspects showing explicit, informed representations has held constant. The NGSS performed well compared to many contemporary documents, but they failed to address all target NOS aspects in a desirable manner. Further

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Section: Implications and Recommendationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Representations of nature of science in U.S. science standards: A historical account with contemporary implications

et al. 2019

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“…Our stance is that those attempting to define and understand NOS should contextually contemplate the authentic work of scientists and public engagement with science. Justifications for students deeply understanding and articulating NOS ideas across a variety of contexts pervades science education literature (e.g., Allchin et al 2014;Clough 2006;Driver et al 1996;Herman 2015Herman , 2018Hodson 2009;Kampourakis 2016;Lederman 2007), and some (McComas and Nouri 2016;Olson 2018) rightly assert that NOS should be brought to the forefront of current standards alongside other important curricular foci (e.g., science content and practices; NGSS Lead States 2013). Justifications for students learning NOS include that understanding NOS facilitates science content understanding and, more broadly, scientific literacy and democratic ways of living through socioscientific decision-making.…”

Section: Students' Nos Understandings and Explanationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…If this is the case, the unwavering expectation among science educators should be that NOS and content are consistently, firmly, and obviously linked in reforms documents and standards as those guide teacher practices. However, Olson (2018) has demonstrated that across the standards analyzed from nine diverse international communities, only one country consistently presents NOS as a focused student learning expectation. Therefore, Olson pointed out that teachers in the majority of the international communities are unlikely to receive conceptual and pedagogical support for effective classroom NOS implementation.…”

Section: Pedagogical Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring the Complexity of Students’ Scientific Explanations and Associated Nature of Science Views Within a Place-Based Socioscientific Issue Context

et al. 2019

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In addition to considering sociocultural, political, economic, and ethical factors (to name a few), effectively engaging socioscientific issues (SSI) requires that students understand and apply scientific explanations and the nature of science (NOS). Promoting such understandings can be achieved through immersing students in authentic real-world contexts where the SSI impacts occur and teaching those students about how scientists comprehend, research, and debate those SSI. This triangulated mixed-methods investigation explored how 60 secondary students' trophic cascade explanations changed through their experiencing place-based SSI instruction focused on the Yellowstone wolf reintroduction, including scientists' work and debates regarding that issue. Furthermore, this investigation determined the association between the students' post place-based SSI instruction trophic cascade explanations and NOS views. Findings from this investigation demonstrate that through the place-based SSI instruction students' trophic cascade explanations became significantly more accurate and complex and included more ecological causal mechanisms. Also, significant and moderate to moderately large correlations were found between the accuracy and contextualization of students' post place-based SSI instruction NOS views and the complexity of their trophic cascade explanations. Empirical substantiation of the association between the complexity of students' scientific explanations and their NOS views responds to an understudied area in the science education research. It also encourages the consideration of several implications, drawn from this investigation's findings and others' prior work, which include the need for NOS to be forefront alongside and in connection with science content in curricular standards and through instruction focused on relevant and authentic place-based SSI.

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“…In recent years, the NOS has been reflected in the syllabuses of various countries (Olson 2018 ), including the “Next Generation Science Standards” in the USA (McComas and Nouri 2016 ), “Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI)” in the EU (Laherto et al 2018 ) and the recent reform of the science curriculum in China (Yao and Guo 2018 ; Li et al 2018 ). However, how to teach students about the NOS has always been a problematic issue.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using Explicit Teaching of Philosophy to Promote Understanding of the Nature of Science

Shi

2020

Sci & Educ

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The Inclusion of the Nature of Science in Nine Recent International Science Education Standards Documents

Cited by 72 publications

References 35 publications

Representations of nature of science in U.S. science standards: A historical account with contemporary implications

Representations of nature of science in U.S. science standards: A historical account with contemporary implications

Exploring the Complexity of Students’ Scientific Explanations and Associated Nature of Science Views Within a Place-Based Socioscientific Issue Context

Using Explicit Teaching of Philosophy to Promote Understanding of the Nature of Science

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