A Study Of Concept Maps Regarding The Nature Of Science By Preservice Secondary Science Teachers

Download or read book A Study of Concept Maps Regarding the Nature of Science by Preservice Secondary Science Teachers written by Young-Soo Kim and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An adequate understanding and conception of the nature of science is one of the important outcomes of science education (American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1989, 1993; National Research Council, 1996; Rutherford & Ahlgren, 1990). Many studies in science education have investigated teachers' conceptions of the nature of science. Most studies have shown that teachers have inadequate or naive conceptions of the nature of science. This study investigated preservice secondary science teachers' conceptions of the nature of science in a college level secondary science methods course by using concept mapping. In addition, three pre and post surveys were used: Survey Statements of the Nature of Science, Science Beliefs Questionnaire and The Nature and Implications of Science/Technology. From the results of this study, preservice teachers' concept maps showed a statistically significant gain in acceptable concepts, vertical links, levels of hierarchy and total scores of acceptable components. These results indicated their growth and/or development conceptions regarding the nature of science. Concept mapping exercises helped preservice teachers recognize and modify their knowledge structures regarding the nature of science. The cognitive development from concept mapping exercises did not significantly affect the results of surveys, however. By investigating the scores of survey items of SSNOS, NIST and SBQ, the researcher concluded that only SSNOS was useful in measuring some of their growth resulted from the concept mapping activities. Particularly, two of the six models by SSNOS, Scientific Laws and General Concerns, indicated statistically significant growth on the part of students from Traditional to Mixed Views of the nature of science. The majority of preservice teachers still held Mixed Views of Role of a Scientist (80%) and General Concerns (93%) on the posttest. Many preservice teachers believed that scientists work independently from the scientific community. They did not understand that scientific laws are the invention of scientists. On the posttest, they still believed science is a body of knowledge rather than a method. They understood science as consisting of conceptual knowledge, not as including procedural knowledge. Therefore, the researcher concluded from SSNOS model analysis that preservice teachers need more help to gain an adequate conceptions regarding the Role of a Scientist, Scientific Method and General Concerns models of the nature of science. Although the development in acceptable components of concept maps, responses on the three models of NIST and the five models of SBQ did not change during the semester. On the NIST posttest, only the Social Implication model showed the increasing achievement compared to the others. However, the pretest means for items of the Nature of Science model indicated preservice teachers already had good understanding at the beginning of the course, and was maintained on the posttest also. On the SBQ posttest, only Theoretical Emphasis and Balanced View models showed statistically significant changes toward more balanced views of science. These results suggest that beliefs on the nature of science were hard to change within a 16-week long semester. Individual item inspection of SSNOS, SBQ and NIST indicated that preservice teachers did not have acceptable conceptions of scientific methods. Students need learning experiences that will help them construct an appropriate understanding of this aspect of the nature of science.