• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.39 no.5
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• pp.681-694
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• 2019

This study intends to delineate the characteristics of various perspectives on the nature of science (NOS) through the textbook analysis. Thus, centering on a science textbook called Science Laboratory Experiments, this study analyzes the elements of the NOS from three different perspectives: the consensus view, features of science (FOS), and family resemblance approach (FRA). While the consensus view highlights the similar elements of the NOS across the topics, the FOS is concerned about empirical ways for doing science. The FRA rather focuses on socio-cultural aspects of science activities. While the consensus view is useful to reify the features of the NOS, the FRA helps to understand science from various viewpoints. Regarding the philosophical account for three perspectives, all of them are ambiguous to some extent. The consensus view holds contradictory dispositions e.g., relativism vs. (post-)positivism, and critical realism and instrumentalism. The FOS supports empirical tradition but cannot effectively cope with the anomalous situation. The FRA is useful to show up the ways of science in both microscopic (personal) and macroscopic (social) viewpoints. However, the broader concept about science may mislead understanding of the NOS. Consequently, this study provides some implication for improving the framework of the NOS and teaching the NOS in the classroom.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.349-362
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• 1995

As science programs emphasize an understanding of the nature of science, it is needed to assess students' views on a wide range of science-technology-society topics. The purpose of this study is to investigate the views of high school students about some selected topics of the epistemology of science. The selected topics include the meaning of science, scientific assumptions, values in science, conceptual inventions in science, scientific method, consensus making in science, and characteristics of the knowledge produced in science. Identified preconceptions in the study are as follows: Science was seen as improving the world(20%), and technology was defined as the application of science(35%). Almost half of the sample(49%) subscribed to a view consistent with a creationist posture and large group of students(46%) expressed a purely ontological view. Only minority of the students(5%) discounted the role played by private science values, but one half of the sample denied the fact that gender-related values can influence the knowledge that scientist construct(53%). Only a small potion of the sample(5%) held a view contrasting to contemporary epistemology of science, but the majority(67%) expressed a simplistic hierarchical relationship in which hypotheses become theories and theories become laws. One third of the students(33%) held a preconception that the scientific method composed of questioning, hypothesizing, collecting data, and concluding. Students did not appreciate the role of consensus making in science(33%). An out-dated epistemic perspective describes the progress of science as simply an accumulation of knowledge(4%). In general, it was concluded that most high school students did not hold efficient understanding on the nature of science. It can be said that no adequate and consistent instruction took place to provide students with an authentic view of the nature of science.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.38 no.5
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• pp.721-738
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• 2018

Nature of Science(NOS) has been a well-organized focus of science education and one of the key elements in defining and cultivating scientific literacy for more than a century. In recent years, a specific description of NOS, which is often known as 'the consensus view of NOS', has become very influential and has gained ready acceptance as an arrangement for both curriculum building and research into understanding of NOS by students and teachers in many countries around the world. This study has two purposes; one is to review some debates and criticism on the consensus view of NOS which consists of a list of sentences to describe nature of refined and general science, which have been heated up for the last few years by many prominent science education researchers, and the other is to consider alternative perspectives on NOS for the purpose of a new direction of NOS education. As a result of an investigation into such views as 'Teaching about NOS', 'Critical NOS', 'Critical Thinking-NOS', 'Whole Science', 'Features of Science' and 'Reconceptualized Family Resemblance Approach to NOS', some implications which focus on the generality and plurality of content knowledge of NOS based on current philosophy of science and sociology of scientific knowledge are suggested for the improvement of teaching and learning NOS.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.353-366
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• 2011

An alternative vision for science inquiry that appears to be important and challenging is model-based inquiry in which students generate, evaluate and revise their explanatory model. Pre-service teachers should be given opportunities to develop and use their mechanistic explanatory models in order to participate in the practice of science and to have a sound understanding of science. With this view, this study described a case of pre-service elementary teachers' scientific modeling in magnetism. The aims of this study were to explore difficulties preservice elementary teachers encountered while they engaged in a model-based inquiry, and to examine how their understandings of the nature of scientific models changed after the model-based inquiry. The data analysis revealed that the pre-service teachers had difficulties in drawing and writing their own thinking because they had little experience of expressing their own science ideas. When asked to predict what would happen, they could not understand what it meant to make a prediction "based on their model". They did not know how to use or consider their model in making a prediction. At the end of the model-based inquiry they reached a final consensus of a best model. However, they were very anxious about whether the model was the "correct" answer. With respect to the nature of scientific models, almost all of the pre-service teachers initially viewed models only as a communication tool among scientists or students and teachers to help understand others' ideas. After the model-based inquiry, however, many of them understood that they could create, test, and revise their "own" models "by themselves". They also realized the key aspects of scientific models that a model can be changed as evidence is accumulated and a model is a knowledge production tool as well as a communication tool. The results indicated that pre-service elementary teachers' understandings of the nature of scientific models and their previous school science experiences could affect their performance on a model-based inquiry, and their experience of scientific modeling could help them enhance their understandings of the nature of scientific models.