An Exploratory Investigation of 12-Year-Old Students' Ability to Appreciate Certain Aspects of the Nature of Science through a Specially Designed Approach in the Context of Energy

We describe the implementation of a specially designed teaching innovation, embedded in the context of energy, for the promotion of specific aspects of the nature of science (NOS). We present empirical results from the implementation of the teaching and learning materials in three intact sixth-grade classes that involved a total of 64 students. We report on students' learning gains and we discuss the ensuing implications for teaching and learning with an emphasis on epistemic ideas. The integration of activities promoting understandings of energy and specific aspects of the NOS seems to work well in impacting on students' epistemic awareness. The findings reveal interesting aspects about the interplay between understandings of energy and the NOS. The article also illustrates that it is possible to teach productively specific aspects of a consensus view of the NOS from a fairly young age without having to rely on advanced science knowledge or explore the intricacies and differentiations across science disciplines.