A number of authors have recognized the importance of understanding the nature of science for scientific literacy. Different instructional strategies such as decontextualized, hands-on inquiry, and history of science activities have been proposed for teaching NOS. This article seeks to understand the contribution of HOS in enhancing biology teachers’ understanding of NOS, and their perceptions about using HOS to teach NOS. These teachers, enrolled in a professional development program in Chile are, according to the national curriculum, expected to teach NOS, (...) but have no specific NOS and HOS training. Teachers’ views of NOS were assessed using the VNOS-D+ questionnaire at the beginning and at the end of two modules about science instruction and NOS. Both the pre- and the post-test were accompanied by interviews, and in the second session we collected information about teachers’ perceptions of which interventions had been more significant in changing their views on NOS. Finally, the teachers also had to prepare a lesson plan for teaching NOS that included HOS. Some of the most important study results were: significant improvements were observed in teachers’ understanding of NOS, although they assigned different levels of importance to HOS in these improvements; and although the teachers improved their understanding of NOS, most had difficulties in planning lessons about NOS and articulating historical episodes that incorporated NOS. The relationship between teachers’ improved understanding of NOS and their instructional NOS skills is also discussed. (shrink)

Understanding the nature of science has long been a desired outcome of science education, despite ongoing disagreements about the content, structure, and focus of NOS expectations. Addressing the concern that teachers likely focus only on student learning expectations appearing in standards documents, this study examines the current state of NOS in science education standards documents from nine diverse countries to determine the overt NOS learning expectations that appeared, NOS statements provided near those learning expectations, but not identified as learning outcomes, (...) and NOS statements found in ancillary text. Findings indicate that NOS ideas rarely occur as expectations for student learning and are far more commonly found in ancillary material. Moreover, consensus was not apparent in the overt learning outcomes for students. Given the well-documented poor state of NOS instruction and the consistent lack of NOS appearing in published curriculum materials, the NOS standards appearing in nearly all documents analyzed are unlikely to provide sufficient conceptual or pedagogical support for NOS to be accurately interpreted or translated into meaningful experiences for students. (shrink)

The inclusion of the history and philosophy of science in science teaching is widely accepted, but the actual state of implementation in schools is still poor. This article investigates possible reasons for this discrepancy. The demands science teachers associate with HPS-based teaching play an important role, since these determine teachers’ decisions towards implementing its practices and ideas. We therefore investigate the perceptions of 8 HPS-experienced German middle school physics teachers within and beyond an HPS implementation project. Within focused interviews these (...) teachers describe and evaluate the challenges of planning and conducting HPS-based physics lessons using collaboratively developed HPS teaching materials. The teachers highlight a number of obstacles to the implementation of HPS specific to this approach: finding and adapting HPS teaching material, knowing and using instructional design principles for HPS lessons, presenting history in a motivating way, dealing with students’ problematic ideas about the history of science, conducting open-ended historical classroom investigations in the light of known historical outcomes, using historical investigations to teach modern science concepts, designing assessments to target HPS-specific learning outcomes, and justifying the HPS-approach against curriculum and colleagues. Teachers' perceived demands point out critical aspects of pedagogical content knowledge necessary for confident, comfortable and effective teaching of HPS-based science. They also indicate how HPS teacher education and the design of curricular materials can be improved to make implementing HPS into everyday teaching less demanding. (shrink)