A Biology Teacher’s Notions and Instruction of Nature of Science

Abstract

This case study investigated a biology teacher’s notions of nature of science (NOS), how and if he used nature of science aspects in his teaching and what he thinks impacts his teaching of nature of science in depth. The context of the study includes a big high school in a rural school district in the USA. The participant of the study is a male biology teacher with fifteen years of teaching experience. Data sources of the study include three interviews with the teacher, fieldnotes taken during the classroom observations, and handouts given to the classroom. Qualitative data analysis from the interviews, fieldnotes and handouts were utilized to provide triangulation of the data sources. Findings show that the teacher had adequate understandings in some aspects of NOS such as tentativeness of scientific knowledge, empirical aspect of scientific knowledge, and role of creativity and imagination in the scientific knowledge. Also, he had some partly-adequate understandings in other aspects such as subjectivity, the difference between scientific theory and law, social-cultural aspect, and the difference between observation and inference. According to the data, the teacher’s conceptions of nature of science revealed from the interviews and his instruction and handout analysis do not match all together. Results were discussed in the context of biology teaching and teacher education.

Keywords

• Nature of Science
• Science Teacher Education
• Biology Education
• Qualitative Case Study.

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