ABSTRACT
Students’ understandings of nature of scientific knowledge (NOSK), sometimes just known as nature of science, has been an educational objective in science education for over 50 years. Understandings of scientific inquiry (NOSI), as opposed to the doing of scientific inquiry, has been emphasized as an educational outcome since the 1990s. The reason for the continued emphasis on NOSK and NOSI is that both are considered critical components of what it means to be scientifically literate. After all, it is assumed that citizens can make the most informed decisions about personal and societal issues that are scientifically based if they are keenly aware of how scientific knowledge is developed (NOSI) and the characteristics of that knowledge (NOSK) as directly derived from how it was developed. To be sure, there are some debates about the exact meanings of NOSK and NOSI; however, the primary focus in this chapter is on those aspects of each construct that are most relevant to the pre-college science curriculum and developmentally appropriate for pre-college science students. Further, and most importantly, this chapter will focus on empirically based approaches to facilitating students’ understandings of NOSK and NOSI. The chapter is organized into four sections. First, a literature review on the conceptualization of the meanings of NOSK and NOSI will be provided. Second, a useful, but brief, summary of the empirical research on the teaching and learning of the aforementioned constructs is presented. The summary of empirical research is followed by sample classroom-based and empirically supported instructional examples spanning the teaching of life science/biology at the upper elementary/middle school (grades 4–8) and secondary grade levels (grades 9–12). All examples are embedded in the context of the subject matter normally included in the science curriculum.
