Emphasizing the History of Genetics in an Explicit and Reflective Approach to Teaching the Nature of Science

Science education researchers have long advocated the central role of the nature of science (NOS) for our understanding of scientific literacy. NOS is often interpreted narrowly to refer to a host of epistemological issues associated with the process of science and the limitations of scientific knowledge. Despite its importance, practitioners and researchers alike acknowledge that students have difficulty learning NOS and that this in part reflects how difficult it is to teach. One particularly promising method for teaching NOS involves an explicit and reflective approach using the history of science. The purpose of this study was to determine the influence of a historically based genetics unit on undergraduates’ understanding of NOS. The three-class unit developed for this study introduces students to Mendelian genetics using the story of Gregor Mendel’s work. NOS learning objectives were emphasized through discussion questions and investigations. The unit was administered to undergraduates in an introductory biology course for pre-service elementary teachers. The influence of the unit was determined by students’ responses to the SUSSI instrument, which was administered pre- and post-intervention. In addition, semi-structured interviews were conducted that focused on changes in students’ responses from pre- to post-test. Data collected indicated that students showed improved NOS understanding related to observations, inferences, and the influence of culture on science.     

小议科学与哲学的定义——自然辩证法教学过程中的一点认识

如何界定科学和哲学,历来众说纷纭,我们可以通过追溯科学和哲学的词源来考察其原始意义。科学是一种探求自然现象的原因的认识活动,名词意义上的科学以认识到的自然现象的原因等为前提,通过逻辑（数学）的方式组织起来的知识体系。哲学是爱智慧,是人因震惊和好奇而试图迎合万物存在的倾向,以后才逐渐演变为反思的活动。由此可以对科学和哲学形成较好的理解。     

Using Newspapers to Examine the Nature of Science

This paper describes the use of newspapers in a philosophy of science course.Using the newspaper as a required text facilitates student exploration of the nature of science by examining current scientific topics. Students in the course read The New York Times on a weekly basis. The articles from the Times support two pedagogical activities: newspaper journals and weekly discussions. The journals consist of free responses to published articles and serve as a means to encourage students to direct their own learning. The weekly discussions permit a free exchange of ideas about controversial topics while facilitating discourse about a multitude of topics concerning the nature of science. This paper describes the course design and provides several examples of how newspaper articles can be used as pedagogical resource.     

Sensor-Augmented Virtual Labs: Using Physical Interactions with Science Simulations to Promote Understanding of Gas Behavior

Deep learning of science involves integration of existing knowledge and normative science concepts. Past research demonstrates that combining physical and virtual labs sequentially or side by side can take advantage of the unique affordances each provides for helping students learn science concepts. However, providing simultaneously connected physical and virtual experiences has the potential to promote connections among ideas. This paper explores the effect of augmenting a virtual lab with physical controls on high school chemistry students’ understanding of gas laws. We compared students using the augmented virtual lab to students using a similar sensor-based physical lab with teacher-led discussions. Results demonstrate that students in the augmented virtual lab condition made significant gains from pretest and posttest and outperformed traditional students on some but not all concepts. Results provide insight into incorporating mixed-reality technologies into authentic classroom settings.     

Using Drama to Promote Argumentation in Science Education

The purpose of this study was to use drama as a springboard for promoting argumentation among 91 first-semester undergraduate medical students (56 females and 35 males, 16–30 years old) in Colombia during a complete teaching–learning sequence (TLS) supervised by the same teacher. The drama used was the play Should’ve, written by Nobel laureate Roald Hoffmann. The data was derived from students’ written responses, audio and video recordings, and written field notes. This investigation provides evidence that an approach combining drama and argumentation could increase students’ awareness of the relevance of ethics in science as one of the features of science (FOS). The findings show that the play Should’ve can be useful for promoting students’ argumentation and is also appropriate for medical students. Future studies could include other science disciplines (e.g., astronomy, biology, chemistry, earth science, ecology, physics); students of other ages; and other plays and experiments in other parts of the world.     

信息技术促进数学教学的实践与认识

总所周知,在高中数学教学中要培养学生的创新能力,如果在实际教育教学活动中仅仅利用课本知识学习,不可能达到这一教学目标。因此,要将信息技术包含其中,以此提高学生实践能力,解决高中数学教学中遇到的问题。信息技术作为一种辅助性教学工具,要避免脱离教材,避免喧宾夺主,教学中要将教学内容、知识内容、学生认知水平结合起来,以求达到教学目标。     

马克思主义哲学的精神实质与哲学教学改革

马克思主义哲学是科学世界观和方法论，是改造世界的哲学，不是永恒不变的真理，更不是教条，而是行动的指南。哲学教学应该让学生掌握马克思主义哲学的精神实质，让学生认识到它是时代精神的精华，是随着时代的发展而不断发展的具有旺盛生命力的哲学。     

马克思主义哲学与自然科学

马克思主义哲学对于指导现代自然科学的研究具有方法论意义,我们主要从方法论功能层面上把握其指导作用。马克思主义哲学对当代大科学也密切关注。     

Developing Understanding of the Nature of Science Within a Professional Development Program for Inservice Elementary Teachers: Project Nature of Elementary Science Teaching

Establishing literacy in science is often linked to building knowledge about the Nature of Science (NOS). This paper describes and evaluates an inservice program designed to build elementary teachers’ understanding of NOS and an awareness of how NOS impacts science classroom instruction. Data sources consisted of surveys, action research plan documentation and classroom observations. Program participants tended to demonstrate some gains in understanding more about NOS and they linked positive experiences in the program to the explicit and activity-based NOS instruction provided. Yet, participation in the professional development project might not have been equally beneficial for all teachers. The understanding of NOS may have been restricted to certain NOS aspects, and the demonstration of the participants’ understanding of NOS may have been short-lived with a somewhat limited impact on sustainable, long-term NOS-based classroom instruction. Implications for designing NOS related professional development programs and suggestions for improvements to further develop teacher understanding of NOS are discussed.     

对哲学与自然科学关系的再认识

人类能够活着,得益于自然,能够活得好,则得益于哲学。哲学和自然科学作为人类的两种基本文化,对于人类社会发展来说犹如“车之两轮”、“鸟之两翼”,它们的兴衰系关人类存亡。科学技术给人类所带来的快捷和便利使人们深切体会到了科技革命的伟大,所以自然科学也愈加被推崇和青睐。然而随着自然科学中轴地位的凸显,哲学社会科学却被推向边缘化的地带。为了防止二者的分道扬镳、脱节和断裂,很有必要对它们的关系再作一考察和认识。     

A Multi-Year Program Developing an Explicit Reflective Pedagogy for Teaching Pre-service Teachers the Nature of Science by Ostention

This investigation delineates a multi-year action research agenda designed to develop an instructional model for teaching the nature of science (NOS) to preservice science teachers. Our past research strongly supports the use of explicit reflective instructional methods, which includes Thomas Kuhn’s notion of learning by ostention and treating science as a continuum (i.e., comparing fields of study to one another for relative placement as less to more scientific). Instruction based on conceptual change precepts, however, also exhibits promise. Thus, the investigators sought to ascertain the degree to which conceptual change took place among students (n = 15) participating in the NOS instructional model. Three case studies are presented to illustrate successful conceptual changes that took place as a result of the NOS instructional model. All three cases represent students who claim a very conservative Christian heritage and for whom evolution was not considered a legitimate scientific theory prior to participating in the NOS instructional model. All three case study individuals, along with their twelve classmates, placed evolution as most scientific when compared to intelligent design and a fictional field of study called “Umbrellaology.”     

The Cultural Argument for Understanding Nature of Science

Understanding Nature of Science (NOS) is a central component of scientific literacy, which is agreed upon internationally, and consequently has been a major educational goal for many years all over the globe. In order to justify the promotion of an adequate understanding of NOS, educators have developed several arguments, among them the cultural argument. But what is behind this argument? In order to answer this question, C. P. Snow’s vision of two cultures was used as a starting point. In his famous Rede Lecture from 1959, he complained about a wide gap between the arts and humanities on the one hand and sciences on the other hand. While the representatives of the humanities refer to themselves as real intellectuals, the scientists felt rather ignored as a culture, despite the fact that their achievements had been so important for Western society. Thus, Snow argued that as these intellectual cultures were completely different from each other, a mutual understanding was impossible. The first European Regional IHPST Conference took up the cultural view on science again. Thus, the topic of the conference “Science as Culture in the European Context” encouraged us to look at the two cultures and to figure out possibilities to bridge the gap between them in chemistry teacher education. For this reason, we put together three studies—one theoretical and two independent research projects (one dealing with creativity in science, the other with scientific laws and theories) which contribute to our main research field (promoting an understanding of NOS)—in order to address the cultural argument for understanding science from an educational point of view. Among the consented tenets of what understanding NOS implies in an educational context, there are aspects which are associated mainly with the humanities, like the tentativeness of knowledge, creativity, and social tradition, whereas others seem to have a domain-specific meaning, like empirical evidence, theories and laws, and the role of technology. Thus, the cultural argument for understanding science invites us not only to consider domain-specific concepts but also to reflect on similarities between science and the humanities by way of examples.     

Using Theory of Mind to Promote Conceptual Change in Science

We argue that learning science requires children to move from perceptually based representations to more abstract conceptual representations and to understand that appearance may sometimes deceive us and that the same phenomenon in the world can have more than one representation when seen from different perspectives. We also argue that the beginnings of such an epistemological perspective can be found in young children’s ability to think about the difference between their beliefs and the beliefs of others in the social domain, i.e., their Theory of Mind. We present the results of two empirical studies that show significant correlations between children’s growing Theory of Mind, developing epistemological thinking, and science learning, and suggest that Theory of Mind tasks can be used to promote conceptual change in science.     

How Pendulum Studies Can Promote Knowledge of the Nature of Science

This paper mentions the extent to which contemporary science curricula include knowledge of the nature of science as a goal of science instruction; it outlines the crucial role played by the pendulum in the achievements of the scientific revolution and documents how little these achievements are included in standard textbooks; it describes a number of classroom pendular experiments and activities that reproduce some of the main 17th centuary experiments and indicates how students can relive the original scientific, procedural and methodological debates; finally the paper suggests ways in which the pendulum can be used in cross-disciplinary teaching thus giving students a more authentic understanding of the way that science has developed in conjunction with mathematics, music, religion and commerce.