Teaching Nature of Science Across Contexts and Grade Levels: Explorations through Action Research and Self Study
We have structured the book into two sections: Action Research and Self-Studies. Within the Action Research section there are two subsections: In person and Online teaching. In the action research section, teachers describe how they embedded NOS into their instruction and examine students’ conceptions of NOS as a result of that instruction. The Action Research Studies on In-Person Nature of Science Teaching and Learning section contains four chapters. The first chapter is a study of integrating NOS (in particular, observation and inference) into kindergarten curriculum by using fairy tales and a mock crime scene. The second chapter in this section describes a study that explores high school chemistry students’ conceptions of NOS embedded in a unit on The Gas Laws and Kinetic Molecular Theory that is grounded in the NGSS. The third chapter examines how NOS can be highlighted in a unit about evolution, focusing on Darwin’s life and work. The fourth and final chapter in this section examined the NOS views of students at a Christian high school. The second section in this book, which contains three chapters, focuses on Action Research Studies on Online Nature of Science Teaching and Learning The first chapter explored the results of embedded NOS into a unit of fingerprinting within a fully asynchronous online college-level forensic science course. The second and third chapters both examined NOS within fully asynchronous online college-level life science courses. The self-study section contains four chapters, with the first being in a fourth-grade classroom as a former high school science teacher strives to remind herself how to teach elementary science as well as embed NOS into her teaching. In the second chapter a high school chemistry teacher shares how she used Appendix H from NGSS as exemplars to teach her chemistry students about NOS. The third chapter highlights how an online college biology instructor incorporated NOS into her courses, and the struggles and resolutions she encountered. In the fourth chapter, an in-person college biology instructor shared her endeavors in incorporating NOS into her instruction, and how she made changes and improved her teaching about NOS. We hope you enjoy this book as much as we have enjoyed conducting the research and putting it together. We hope it adds to the field, and we hope it will prompt others to explore teaching NOS in various contexts and sharing their outcomes as well. Enjoy the book!
Dr. Valarie L. Akerson, Dr. Ingrid S. Carter
Editors
