Probing Teaehers’ Views of the Nature of Science: How Should We Do It and Where Should We Be Looking?

We begin this paper with a review of ways of probing teachers’ views of the nature of science and then outline models of teacher knowledge, teachers and science which inform and underpin a probe we have developed. This probe consists of what we call ‘critical incidents’. The value and validity of these is discussed and we finish by highlighting what we see as some of the key issues in research into teachers’ views of the nature of science.