• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.553-568
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• 2013

Although many researchers and science educators agree that understanding of the nature of science is essential in order for students to be a scientific literate person, it is not easy to compromise exactly what kind of understanding of the nature of science is required to achieve this goal (Smith & Scharmann, 1999). This study discusses a theoretical background about the nature of science (NOS) including some consensus views of the NOS that several important U.S. educational reform documents and science researchers have presented over the past several decades. Finally, this study proposes an inclusive framework of the nature of science based on the four categories of scientific literacy, which are (1) science as a body of knowledge, (2) science as a way of investigating, (3) science as a way of thinking, and (4) the interaction of science, technology, and society. Each category of the framework includes several statements about the nature of science to describe each theme of the NOS. This framework is comprehensive and inclusive because it is suggested by examining several major U.S. national-level documents and in the publications of science education researchers presented about the nature of science. Significantly, many of the key ideas were added into category (4) and category (3), which indicates that the current literature stresses the relationship among science, technology, and society as well as the work of scientists.

• 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 The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.428-445
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• 2012

The objective of this study is developing an instrument for investigating views of the respondents on nature of science(NOS) by using experienced scientific knowledge, atomic model. It consists of total six questions and 36 detail items, and each question is reflected the aspects of different NOS which are 'recognition on the model', 'tentativeness of scientific knowledge', 'subjectivity in science', 'use of inference and imagination', 'myths of the scientific method', and 'comparison between science and art'. Particularly, 'comparison between science and art' is addressed almost for the first time in this questionnaire. In the class environment almost not to teach nature of science linking with concrete scientific knowledge, to inquire how the students recognize nature of science, relating to experienced scientific knowledge through this questionnaire will give the data of scientific knowledge based recognition on the nature of science and an important implication for nature of science teaching with concrete scientific knowledge. Developing processes have gone through four steps. In first step, we chose aspects of NOS and developed questions and details. In second step, we tested the draft into fifteen science teachers and, reflecting their opinions, corrected the form and contents of questionnaires. In third step, we tested the questionnaire included writing section for expressing thoughts of the respondents into 55 students in science high school and checked index of coincidence between Likert and open-ended responses which shows 88.2% degree of consensus. Furthermore, to identify the feature of using concrete scientific knowledge we applied this and views on science and education questionnaires together into six university students. We performed final test to 68 university students and measured Cronbach's, and ultimately completed final questionnaire in last step.