Chapter 6
Becoming an Elementary Teacher of Nature
of Science: Lessons Learned for Teaching
Elementary Science
Valarie L. Akerson, Ingrid S. Weiland, Vanashri Nargund-Joshi,
and Khemmawadee Pongsanon
About 15 years ago, I (Valarie, first author) was an elementary teacher—one of
those elementary teachers with a reputation as one who “loved science.” I ran afterschool science clubs for students in the school, led students in designing and
carrying out their own investigations so they could compete at a state level, and
generally emphasized science in all of my elementary teaching. For the past
15 years, I have been working as a professor of science education, navigating the
tenure and promotion process, and thinking about and researching others’ practice
and the influence of these on elementary students’ knowledge. I have worked with
numerous elementary preservice and in-service teachers, supporting their efforts to
teach children science in the best way possible. Something that I knew was missing
from my own prior experience as an elementary teacher was an emphasis on the
nature of science (NOS). I knew that when I was an elementary teacher, I never
explicitly taught about NOS because I really was not aware of it—it was not until
my doctoral program that I learned about NOS. Reflecting on my earlier teaching
practice as I became a science educator, I was convinced that elementary students
V.L. Akerson (*)
Indiana University, 201 North Rose Avenue, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA
e-mail: vakerson@indiana.edu
I.S. Weiland
Assistant Professor of Science Education, College of Education and Human Development,
University of Louisville, 1905 S. 1st Street #273, Louisville, KY 40292, USA
e-mail: ingrid.weiland@louisville.edu
V. Nargund-Joshi
Department of Learning & Instruction, Graduate School of Education University at Buffalo,
SUNY Buffalo, NY 14260-1000, USA
e-mail: vnargund@indiana.edu
K. Pongsanon
The Institute for the Promotion of Teaching Science and Technology, 924 Sukhumvit Rd.,
Ekkamai, Klong Toei 10110, BKK, Thailand
M. Dias et al. (eds.), Science Teacher Educators as K-12 Teachers:
Practicing what we teach, ASTE Series in Science Education 1,
DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-6763-8_6, © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2014
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could learn about NOS, yet I heard from many elementary teachers how hard it
was to include in the curriculum. I became convinced that in order to help others,
I needed to explore how to teach NOS to elementary students myself and therefore
took a sabbatical to become a third grade teacher again—teaching all subjects, as
well as embedding NOS into my science instruction. I became a full-time third
grade teacher for one semester, followed by part-time teaching the second semester
of the school year while I went back to the university full-time.
Context
The school where I taught during my sabbatical was one of the schools in which
I had conducted numerous professional development programs. I worked in a
teacher’s classrooms with whom I had collaborated previously through professional
development programs. This school was an at-risk school, having failed No Child
Left Behind tests for four previous years. It was considered a challenging school to
work in due to circumstances of poverty that the children experienced. The school
served a diverse and transient student population. I decided I would learn more about
teaching NOS if I chose a challenging setting so I could see just what all elementary
students could learn about NOS, not just those at a high-performing school.
My goals for this experience were (a) to update my knowledge of teaching NOS to
elementary students that in turn would help me to improve my preservice and
in-service teacher preparation and (b) to understand what third grade students could
learn about NOS after participating in a full year of instruction that was connected to
their science curriculum. To understand the effectiveness of my teaching on my
students’ understandings of NOS, I collected data from my classroom related to my
NOS instruction, and I asked three other researchers to aid in data collection and
analysis. These researchers are experienced in working with elementary students in
formal and/or informal settings and teaching preservice teachers about NOS and are
well versed in NOS research. Ingrid is a former third grade teacher who was recently in
the classroom and was currently a doctoral student, Vanashri was a doctoral student
with experience in inquiry teaching and NOS instruction, and Khemmawadee was a
current doctoral student with experience in investigating young children’s conceptions
of NOS. They helped me analyze and interpret my data with reduced biases.
In the remainder of this chapter, I will describe my experiences teaching third
grade and teaching NOS at third grade. I will describe the influence of my teaching
on my students’ NOS conceptions and describe successes and difficulties encountered when teaching NOS as part of my third grade science curriculum.
Planning the Curriculum to Teach NOS
To plan what ideas about NOS I would teach to third graders, I consulted the same
resource that any classroom teacher might consult—the NSTA position statement
for teaching NOS. I had used it in my university teaching and had also shared it with
6 Becoming an Elementary Teacher of Nature of Science. . .
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practicing teachers so they might conceptualize what they needed to teach to their
students. The position statement from National Science Teachers Association
(NSTA 2000) outlines aspects of NOS that students need to learn by the end of
high school. These aspects are (a) scientific knowledge is both reliable and tentative; (b) no single scientific method exists, but there are shared characteristics of
scientific approaches to science (e.g., scientific explanations are supported by, and
testable against, empirical observations of the natural world); (c) creativity plays a
role in the development of scientific knowledge; (d) there is a crucial distinction
between observations and inferences; (e) though science strives for objectivity,
there is always an element of subjectivity (theory-ladenness); and (f) social and
cultural contexts play a role in development of scientific knowledge. I targeted
these aspects in my teaching but did not include the distinction between theory and
law because it was not part of the third grade curriculum. I believe that elementary
students can and should learn NOS and if taught accurate conceptions of NOS as
young children, through inquiry-based science, they can better understand science
content as they move through school and have fewer misconceptions after their
formal schooling. I thought about which elements of NOS from the list recommended by NSTA would be attainable for third graders and decided to begin by
emphasizing the distinction between observation and inference, followed by the
tentative NOS, the absence of a single scientific method, the empirical NOS,
creativity, and then subjectivity and social-cultural context. I decided to emphasize
NOS aspects in this order because I thought it would be easier for students to
conceptualize more concrete ideas, followed by more abstract. I believed these
NOS elements would not only be attainable to students but would lend themselves
to being integrated within the third grade science curriculum.
Exploring how elementary students come to know NOS has been the target of
research for several years, yet we are still studying best practices. Smith et al.
(2000) found that students improved their NOS conceptions when they were taught
by a teacher who emphasized NOS throughout the elementary grades. In some of
my own work with teachers (Akerson and Volrich 2006), we explored first graders’
conceptions of NOS as a result of explicit reflective instruction and noted that
these students improved their understandings of several NOS elements. Explicit
instruction simply means to draw the learner’s attention to the NOS aspects in
scientific inquiries and can be done through debriefing and use of reflective writings
or stories. I have also found that elementary students of different grade levels
improved their understandings of NOS elements and that children as young as
five were able to conceptualize various elements of NOS (Akerson and Hanuscin
2007; Akerson and Donnelly 2010) that are advocated by the NSTA position
statement (NSTA 2000). Khishfe and Abd-El-Khalick’s (2002) study with older
students influenced my thinking because they found that elementary students who
participated in explicit reflective NOS instruction could conceptualize NOS ideas
better than those who participated in scientific inquiry but without explicit NOS
instruction. Common to all of these studies were explicit reflective activities
that connected students’ NOS understandings to the science content, as well as
provided them with specific activities designed to introduce them to the targeted
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NOS elements. I also believed that elementary students who are unfamiliar with
NOS ideas would need to receive explicit instruction in the terms as well as use
those terms within their science investigations. Therefore, I intended to use contextualized NOS instruction that enabled the students to explore NOS along with their
science content (Clough 2006). Contextualized NOS instruction would mean that
NOS would be connected to the science content students were learning, and would
be explicitly noted through discussion and reflections.
I read through the Full Option Science System (FOSS) curriculum that we had at
our school and found it to be full of great investigations. However, I also found that
it did not contain explicit reference to any NOS elements. I found out that it was,
indeed, difficult to embed NOS in the science curriculum, mainly because it was not
part of the design of the curriculum and I needed to make adaptations to include
explicit reference to NOS aspects. I needed to design ways to connect NOS to the
science content we were studying. For example, during the rocks unit I added a
debriefing activity that connected observation and inference to chemical reactions
that would indicate calcite was likely present in the rock. We discussed how we
could infer that there was calcite in the rock due to the reaction we observed, but we
could change our mind with additional evidence or reinterpretation of our evidence.
I also emphasized observation and inference and prediction throughout other
content I taught, such as making predictions in stories being read and exploring
the distinctions between observations and inferences in social studies lessons.
Teaching all subjects enabled me to reinforce NOS ideas while making distinctions
among those ideas across content. I will describe the strategies and the curriculum
in the Teaching NOS in Third Grade section below.
Tracking the Teaching and Learning of NOS
To explore my teaching I maintained a daily researcher/teacher log in which I
reflected on my instruction, what I believed students were learning, and other events
that took place during the school days. I videotaped all of my science teaching so I
could review it later. I videotaped small groups of students as they worked on
science inquiries. I kept copies of student work and student notebooks to help me
formatively assess their NOS conceptions and further plan instruction. See Fig. 6.1
for a sample of a notebook entry.
To determine students’ NOS views, we administered the VNOS-D2 in pre, post
(midyear—December), and post-post (end of school year) interviews (Lederman
and Khishfe 2002). The VNOS-D2 is an open-ended instrument that elicits ideas
about certainty in scientific knowledge, characteristics that distinguish science from
other fields, creativity in science, and scientific subjectivity. These interviews lasted
approximately 30 min each. We also conducted small-group interviews in the
spring semester using the Young Children’s Views of Science (Lederman 2007)
protocol. These interviews allowed us to consider how children think and express
ideas about science among themselves and allowed us to elaborate on our
6 Becoming an Elementary Teacher of Nature of Science. . .
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Fig. 6.1 Sample student
notebook entry
understandings of their NOS conceptions. We also used the student work that I
collected to further track changes in student NOS conceptions over time.
To analyze teaching practice, we viewed videotapes and focused on my strategies
in the contextualized NOS inquiry instruction. We took notes of our video observations and compared those notes at regularly scheduled meetings. All videotaped
lessons were reviewed by at least two authors. These analyses were shared with
me to enable me to adjust my instruction accordingly. To establish internal validity,
data were collected from multiple sources and peer-debriefing sessions were used.
Data from the researcher log were consulted along with viewing the videotapes.
We developed themes and focused on contrasts in students’ understanding of NOS
during classroom discussion and during interviews. We then identified successful
instances of explicit NOS inquiry teaching strategies, focusing on both student and
teacher interactions. We reviewed copies of student work to further determine
change in student NOS conceptions over time and matched these to teaching
episodes to track changes in teaching over time. We reviewed my teacher/researcher
log for insights into teaching NOS during the course of the school year. To formally
track student NOS conceptions, Khemmawadee and I analyzed the VNOS-D2 pre,
post (December), and post-post (May), seeking patterns of individual student
responses and then comparing analyses. Discrepancies were resolved through further consultation of the data. We then compared pre, post, and post-post data to note
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change in NOS conceptions over the course of the school year. We also analyzed
the Young Children’s Views of Science interviews to enable us to discern how
students talked among themselves about science and NOS ideas.
Teaching NOS in Third Grade
It is interesting to note that I began writing in my researcher log about a week prior
to starting the school year. I had idealistic goals of helping students to know science
and NOS and to love science as much as I did. However, by the day before school
started, I was no longer thinking about science or NOS, just about teaching the kids
and having a great first day and first week. I did not begin teaching science until the
second week of school (despite the fact that I love it and want all students to love it)
because I was very focused on getting routines and systems established and getting
to know the students. It is also interesting to note that it did not take long before
the realities of the classroom came flooding back to me. How in the world was I
supposed to teach science when there were so many other subjects to teach and such
a limited number of hours in the day? I began to worry about teaching the other
subjects well; I had been thinking about teaching science at the elementary level for
years and had also had experiences in teaching elementary science during that time
in informal settings, but I had not taught reading, social studies, or mathematics
lessons for 15 years. How would I do these subjects justice? I relied heavily on the
teachers’ guides for these subjects initially and on the regular classroom teacher for
support in teaching other content areas. In many ways I felt like a new teacher all
over again. I thought it would be easy to return to the role of a classroom teacher,
yet it was not easy at all.
However, when I began teaching science in the second week, I really felt like I
was “in my element.” I began by introducing science as a way of knowing and
giving them an introduction to tentativeness, observation and inference, and subjectivity in my first lesson as part of the FOSS Earth Materials unit. I began
emphasizing these ideas in the students’ “morning work” which was the work
they began when they came into the room before the bell rings. For example,
I may have had a sentence on the morning work that said, “Give two observations
about the weather today. Now make an inference for whether we will have outside
or inside recess,” or “Scientists know everything there is to know, and will never
change their minds (true or false).”
As we progressed through the FOSS Earth Materials unit, I continued embedding the distinction between observation and inference by having them make
observations of their investigations and inferring what kind of rocks they had or
whether their rocks had any minerals in them. It also seemed clear to me that it was
a good opportunity to embed tentativeness, because the students could see that
they could be reasonably certain about the types of rocks they identified, but could
never be fully sure, and they may change their minds if they look at new data.
For example, we made an observation and inference chart that we filled out as a
6 Becoming an Elementary Teacher of Nature of Science. . .
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class, on which we listed reactions of different rocks and then inferences about
what types of rock might contain calcite. We then talked about how these inferences
were based on data, yet we might change or modify these inferences if we did more
tests on the rock.
An interesting opportunity arose in the reading curriculum about
mid-September. The reading series had a unit entitled “thinking like a scientist.”
I was able to incorporate many NOS ideas in this unit and also led a class discussion
that debunked the section in the reading series that taught about the scientific
method. The students in the class were really surprised to be reading about how
“scientists always use the scientific method.” We held a discussion about how
people often do think that scientists only work that way, and yet scientists are not
constrained by one method but are actually very creative in designing, carrying out,
and interpreting their investigations. We were even able to draft a letter to the
publisher why they should remove this section from their book.
In my researcher log I noted many instances that made it difficult to teach not
only science but all subjects, due to the wide variety of students in our class. It was
challenging teaching reading to a class of students who ranged from nonreaders to
reading at a middle school level, for instance. However, in science it seemed it was
a more level playing field. I remember thinking that when I was a teacher 15 years
ago, during science it did not matter so much if you could read or write; it mattered
more whether you were looking at the data and how you were interpreting it and
communicating your findings. I found the same thing still held true: our very low
student whom people were concerned about shined in science—he was always able
to do the investigations and talk about what he was finding out, even though he
could not write about it in his log nor read any background information.
By mid-September I was emphasizing scientific creativity, tentativeness, and the
sociocultural NOS while continuing to reinforce the distinction between observation and inference. It was clear to see that I led all these discussions regarding these
NOS aspects during the first 3 months of the year—I stated something like “Where
do we see scientific tentativeness illustrated in our investigation?” and allowed
students to share thoughts about changing ideas as a result of additional data or
rethinking their current data.
By about the middle of October, I continued to orchestrate the NOS discussions,
but my question was phrased in such a way that it required students to take more
responsibility for identifying the NOS aspects. For example, in an investigation of
jumping beans where students needed to explore and determine what exactly these
small items were, I concluded the first day of the investigation with the following
interaction:
Teacher
S1
S2
S3
Teacher
What kinds of NOS ideas do you see illustrated in this investigation?
We made observations, and we inferred they were not actually seeds.
Which is like tentativeness because we changed our minds.
We got more information by looking at the envelope they came in.
Which gave us more background knowledge—lead to our subjectivity
and helped us determine more about the item.
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Shortly after the jumping bean investigation, I began to use science notebooks in
the class to help the students record their ideas and investigations and track their
own understandings. When I was an elementary teacher years ago, I used similar
notebooks to have my students record their data and reflect on their own thinking
about science content through writing. I found it an effective way for me to track
their thinking and knowledge about science content throughout science units.
I thought that using science notebooks could do the same for me in helping me
track their thinking about NOS content knowledge, as well as science content
knowledge, through reading their reflections in their notebooks. I asked students
to record data in them and to reflect on NOS ideas in writing in their notebooks by
providing them with writing prompts, such as “record your ideas about NOS that
you saw in your investigation.” Students drew pictures as well as wrote while they
were investigating. An example of a student response to the notebook prompt of
“describe what you know about NOS” is in Fig. 6.1. As you can see, the student
listed NOS aspects and wrote her own brief definitions in her own words.
By the second half of the school year, I was only teaching science and was only
in the classroom once a week because I was back at the university full-time. Though
I only taught science once a week at this point, I continued to emphasize NOS
aspects that were introduced in the first half of the school year. For instance, prior to
an investigation on observation and inference, I read the book Boy, Were We Wrong
About Dinosaurs. I used the book to emphasize the distinction between observation
and inference, as well as the tentative NOS. I asked students to “think about NOS
ideas and then share your ideas at the end of the book, and then we will do an
activity with fossils.”
As I read the story, we stopped to discuss ideas, such as the idea that early
scientists from China had “guessed” that dinosaur bones had come from dragons:
Teacher
S1
S2
Teacher
S2
Teacher
S3
Do scientists guess?
Sure, they do.
No, they predict.
Right, they find these bones, and they make observations and infer
dragons. Do they still think that these bones belong to dragons?
No! Dinosaurs!
Sure, so can scientists change their minds?
Yes! When their predictions might not be right, they make new ones that
work better. After, they get more data.
Similar conversations took place as the story went on. After the story we did a
“Fossil Find” activity, during which students “unearthed” cutout paper fossils,
made observations, inferred what the fossils were from, “unearthed” more fossil
bones, reinterpreted their data, changed their inferences (if necessary), and compared their inferences to skeletons of existing animals, again having the opportunity
to change their inference if they chose. During this time they worked in small
groups. I noticed while I was videotaping students that they were correctly using the
terms “observations” and “inferences” while they were investigating. For instance,
one student Rupert stated, “I made a lot of observations of these bones. I am
6 Becoming an Elementary Teacher of Nature of Science. . .
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inferring a dinosaur!” These statements were not made to me but to others in their
investigation groups. The students also listed observations and inferences in their
notebooks. This use of NOS terminology illustrates to me that they did not simply
memorize these terms but actually conceptualized them enough to be able to use
them without being prompted. During this multiday activity the students continued
to explore their ideas, and at the end of the investigation, they shared their ideas:
S1
S2
S3
S4
Teacher
Students
Teacher
S5
S6
I think it is a bird because of the skeleton.
I think it is a cat.
We think it is a cat too.
We thought it was a rabbit or bat.
If you were real scientists, would you ever know for sure which animals
these bones are from?
No!
Why not?
Because you just never saw the animal—you just have their leftover
bones. So you can try to figure it out, but you will never know for sure.
Scientists need evidence. But they still might not know for sure because
they have to think about their evidence over time and they might change
their minds, like when we got more fossils.
The students continued describing NOS ideas from this activity, including
the tentative NOS, inferential NOS, and creative NOS (including creating an idea
of the animal from the bones).
What Did My Students Learn About NOS?
I found through my associated research that my students did, indeed, learn about
NOS as connected to their science. I was genuinely pleased to find out the growth
they made in their NOS understandings over the course of the school year.
I interviewed all students whose parents consented pre-instruction midway
through the school year and then had help with interviews from another member
of the research team at the end of the school year. Because not all parents signed
consent forms, I needed to ensure that some students were not visible in the videos I
made as well. I used the VNOS-D2 for the pre and post interviews and Young
Children’s Views of Science coupled with individual VNOS-D2 interviews at the
end of the school year. It was not easy interviewing students while I was also the
lead teacher, but then again, it was not easy keeping a teacher/researcher log every
night after teaching all day, either. I figured that other teachers conducted action
research while teaching, and in fact, I was a strong advocate of the reflective,
evidence-based practice, and so I should be able to do it too. I did not realize it was
so difficult, but I definitely was able to do it. It was tough teaching all day, writing in
a researcher log at night, and thinking about my 23 students’ work both as an
assessment of their knowledge and as a data. The analysis of student data was
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conducted with another research team member who had experience working with
the VNOS-D2 and analyzing the data for young children (Khemmawadee), because
I was afraid I might have been biased in my interpretations of my students’
conceptions. I may have been hoping that they improved as a result of being in
my class, when in reality they may not have. In the sections below we describe the
students’ preconceptions of NOS, midyear conceptions, and end of school year
conceptions. It is clear to see that the students’ conceptions improved over the
course of the school year.
Students’ Pre-intervention Conceptions of NOS
At the beginning of the year, four of sixteen students (those whose permission
was obtained to participate in the research) believed that scientific knowledge is
absolute, indicating an inadequate conception of the tentative NOS. For example,
when asked to elaborate on their responses, one of the students (Danielle) said that
“They always don’t change.” Moreover, among those students who believed that
scientific knowledge is subject to change, five of them (of 12 students) could not
elaborate on the idea of how or why it could change. Only three students explicated
that scientific knowledge changes as either new evidence is discovered or scientists
try new inventions. However, their responses did not illustrate their informed
views. For example, one student stated, “They like to change the way their inventions look.” The other two students simply referred to scientists changing their ideas
because of inventions.
Regarding the empirical NOS, student responses indicated that they realized that
scientists use empirical data collected from the natural world to form a conclusion.
For example, 15 students out of 16 believed that scientists used dinosaurs’ bones,
footprints, and fossils as evidence to make a conclusion that dinosaurs existed in
the past.
Prior to the intervention, some of the students were not aware of the role of
inferences in scientific work. Among the students who believed that scientists
use evidence to make inferences about how the natural world works, only 60 %
of them indicated that scientists make observations to get some empirical data and
make inferences from this data; therefore, they are not certain about their findings.
One stated, “Scientists saw dinosaurs, so they know what they look like.” When
students who agreed that scientists had not seen dinosaurs were asked for an
explanation for what makes scientists unsure about their conclusion about what
dinosaurs looked like, another student said, “they found footprints and bones and
fossils underground, but not the outside of the dinosaur.” Another student Rupert
also referred to dinosaur skin when asked the same question. These responses
indicate that at least some students recognized that scientists need data to make
claims, yet do not recognize the role of data in making inferences about missing
or difficult to obtain evidence.
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Ten out of sixteen students believed that scientist use their creativity and
imagination in their scientific work. Most of them elaborated in the interviews
that scientists have to think and that is how they use their imagination. However, six
participants were not aware of the roles of creativity and imagination in scientific
work. Some students not only ignored the role of imagination but were very against
the idea that scientists make use of it. One student stated, “They don’t have to
imagine anything because they have facts. They are scientists. They tell the truth.”
Students held inadequate views of subjective NOS prior to instruction. Five out
of sixteen students either provided irrelevant answers or did not provide their
responses to the question in relation to this aspect of the NOS. Three students
thought that different evidence used by different scientists lead them to disagreement about dinosaurs’ extinction. Only four students were able to relate the
disagreement to different ideas or opinions held by different scientists; however,
they had difficulty making a connection to the influence of scientists’ background
knowledge to their conclusions. One student stated, “They want other people to
agree with them, so they choose the part that makes people agree with them.”
Students’ Post-intervention Views of NOS (December)
The results from the interviews showed improvement on students’ conceptions of
the tentative NOS. While four students believed in absolute science at the beginning
of the year, after one semester, only two of them still held that view. However, the
students who changed their beliefs could not elaborate the reason of the change in
the responses. Moreover, data show that the majority of students believed that
scientific knowledge is tentative because scientists continue experimenting and
discover new evidence. Students still did not conceptualize the idea that scientists
could change their claims in light of looking again at the data.
Responses to the post survey and interviews indicated that students were more
aware of empirical data used in science. At the end of the school year, most students
understood that science is different from other subjects because scientists collect
data, illustrating an improved understanding of the empirical NOS. Moreover, when
asked what science is, one student illustrated his improved view of the empirical
NOS by responding “Science is where you take data and gather it with other data,
and then you use what you know to figure something out.”
All students recognized the role of observation in scientific work. They understood that scientists use fossils and bones as evidence to show the existence of
dinosaurs in the past. However, some the students still held an incomplete view of
the role of inferences. Two students demonstrated their informed view of this aspect
of the NOS. When asked how scientists know there were dinosaurs in the past, one
student said, “They find fossils, rocks and bones. They thought it came from an
animal that lived a long time ago, but they are not sure, they could put together
the bones in the wrong way.”
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The results from the midyear interviews indicated a huge improvement on
students’ view of creativity in science. There is only one student who retained his
naive belief that scientist use only empirical data to make inference. Five students
became aware of the critical role of creativity and imagination in scientific work.
Most of the students who held an adequate view of this aspect of NOS believed that
creativity plays a big role during interpreting data. Two students explicitly stated
that scientists imagine what their inference will be. Two students developed an
informed view of this aspect of NOS. When asked when scientists use their
imagination, one student responded, “They imagine what their data means, to
figure out their evidence.” Another student stated, “They use their imaginations
when they study stuff, so they can imagine what they are figuring out.”
Students had difficulty conceptualizing the subjective NOS. Some students still
provided irrelevant responses during the interviews. The results from the midyear
interviews indicated some improvement, however, as seven of sixteen students
were able to articulate that scientists’ different opinions cause disagreement regarding data interpretation among scientists. To the question regarding why scientists
may interpret evidence regarding the extinction of dinosaurs differently, one
student stated, “Because there are lots of ways they can die. And maybe one
scientist sees something else in the data than the other ones see.”
Students’ Post-post-intervention Views of NOS (May)
The results from the May interviews indicated improvement in students’ conceptions of tentative NOS. All ten students who were interviewed in May (due to
attrition) believed that science can be changed. While eight students showed
adequate views of tentativeness, two students demonstrated their informed views
of this aspect of NOS by stating that science can change when scientists discover
more information or if they look at existing evidence differently. One student said,
“Well, if you get some data and one scientist thinks what they figure out is right,
they might find more data, like maybe dig up another kind of bone, and then have to
fit it in and it will be different and change their idea they had before.”
All students understood that empirical data is a crucial part of the development
of scientific knowledge by May. When asked how scientists know that dinosaurs
existed in the past, they all said that scientists had found bones and fossils.
Additionally, when asked how science is different from other school subjects,
nine out of ten students referred to the prominent role of empirical data by
mentioning that in science they have to collect and record data, but they do not
need to do so in other subjects. One student stated, “None of the other subjects use
data—in science you collect data and figure out what it means.”
Regarding the distinction between observation and inference, all students
recognized that scientists make observations and use evidence to form inferences.
One student said that science is different from other school subjects because
“We make observations and inferences in science. We study it, talk about it, and
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write down our ideas.” Moreover, all students knew that scientists found bones, put
them together, and inferred the shape of dinosaur. No longer did any student believe
that scientists had seen dinosaurs.
Nine students out of the ten students believed that scientists are not certain about
their inferences. They understood that the bones and fossils found are parts of
dinosaurs but that there are other parts that have not been discovered such as skin,
and the unseen parts make inferences uncertain. For example, when asked whether
scientists are positive about the shape of dinosaurs, one student said, “Scientists can
never be 100% positive about what dinosaurs looked like. They have bones, but
don’t really know how to put them together exactly. No one has ever seen one.”
Nine out of ten students recognized the roles of creativity and imagination in
the development of scientific knowledge when scientists form inferences or
explanations. Five of out nine demonstrated informed views. When asked when
scientists use their imagination, one student responded, “They have a topic they are
studying, and they imagine what they already know about it to help them figure out
what new data means.” Another student mentioned that scientists use their imagination when they think about what kind of skin dinosaurs have. Furthermore, the
same student explicitly mentioned that scientists are not sure about dinosaurs
although they found dinosaur bones. Scientists still have to use their imagination
for inferring other characteristics such as skin and eyes. He stated, “They have to try
to create an understanding of what it actually looked like, using the data they have
and imagining what they don’t have.”
However, one student did not change his conception of the creative and imaginative aspect of NOS. He retained the belief that scientists have to be true to the
facts or information that they collect, and if they used imagination, they would not
form reasonable explanations. He said, “If scientists used their imaginations, they
would be telling lies. That is not good science.”
By the end of the school year, all of the students realized that scientists could
disagree because they are different people with different perspectives and backgrounds. When asked to elaborate on their responses of what causes scientists to
make different claims from data, five students demonstrated their informed views
of subjective NOS by stating that scientists have different ways of thinking and
different prior knowledge. For example, one student stated, “Sometimes different
groups of scientists have different ideas about the data. Then they share their ideas
with the other group and they could change their minds. It is because they look at
the data different [ly].” Another student said, “People don’t usually look at the data
the same way. They all have different minds and they think about the data in
different ways because they grew up different.”
In addition, another student (Rob) illustrated his informed view of tentative
NOS during the discussion about the role of creativity in scientific work. He said,
“Some scientists think dinosaurs evolved into birds, [and] that is creative. Some
think dinosaurs started as sea dinosaurs then became land dinosaurs and then flying
dinosaurs.”
The results from the interviews at the end of the school year indicated a huge
improvement of student participants’ understanding of the empirical NOS.
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All students differentiated science from other school subjects using this aspect of
NOS. The conversation below from the group interview during the semester
illustrates a conversation students had among themselves regarding the empirical
NOS:
Interviewer
Student 1
Student 2
Student 1
Student 3
Student 1
Student 4
Student 2
How is science different from other things you learn about?
Because you collect data in science. If you don’t have observations
and inferences, you aren’t doing science.
Like with math you don’t really figure stuff out you have to just solve
the same kind of problems, but with science you get to figure out
stuff.
In science you look at stuff, think about it, collect data.
People in the olden times created science so they thought when they
observated [sic] and inference it, they would be doing science.
Like with science you do observation and inferences to figure things
out for yourself, not just read about it in a paper or something.
Like someone figured out germs with a microscope, and that was
science because they had to figure out what they were seeing in the
microscope.
And people invent things. That is science. You cannot really guess
stuff in science you have to figure it out. If you guess it is not science.
You make observations and figure out what they mean.
It is clear from their conversation that the students are discussing science in
terms of evidence, observation, and inference and the role of the scientists in terms
of interpreting the data. The discussion above also illustrates the improved
understandings of observations and inferences that all students shared at the end
of the school year.
Implications for Myself and Other Science Teacher Educators
My work as an elementary teacher for that school year has been folded into my
current elementary methods courses by my ability to share my own third grade
students’ work regarding their NOS learning, as well as describe evidence-based
strategies that I have used with students that improved their learning not only of
science but of NOS. I am also able to share strategies for embedding NOS into
curricula in which it does not naturally lie.
I have also grown to rethink my own research practice. This teaching experience
raised questions for me regarding whether any researcher can really know what is
going on in a classroom of learners with classroom observations and interviews as
data sources. I know that I was enmeshed in the classroom as a teacher/researcher
and believe I grew to know the learners as a whole student, rather than only partially
as a researcher of their science knowledge. I am still thinking of ways to approach
6 Becoming an Elementary Teacher of Nature of Science. . .
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research that would enable me to have a broader picture of students as learners as
well as learners of science.
I learned a lot about teaching NOS to children just by doing it. I learned that I
was able to teach them about NOS, and they were able to learn it. I know I need to
focus more on the subjective NOS if I want them to have better conceptions, but in
general, I know they improved their understandings a lot. I learned it is not as easy
to teach NOS as I thought it would be for me—it takes explicit planning to infuse it
in the science lessons because it is not a part of the curriculum—I had to make it
become part of the curriculum. I needed to think of ways to connect it to the content,
to make it explicit to young children, and to find ways for them to reflect orally and
in writing on their changing NOS conceptions.
I also had to find ways to assess their understandings both to inform my future
instruction and to understand their conceptions. I was able to use individual interviews and small-group interviews to formally collect data on the young learners’
understandings and was then able to compare my teacher-designed assessments with
assessments made from formal instrumentation. This is usually not feasible for
teachers. I found the experience very difficult but also very enlightening. I remembered how difficult it was to fit science into an elementary curriculum and then
realized how difficult it was to also include NOS. I was especially surprised by one
elementary student who continued to say how much she hated science yet was able
to fully conceptualize the ideas of NOS as well as science content. I learned that you
do not have to love science to be able to understand it.
I was prepared to work hard, and I did, but I was not prepared to grow to love
the experience so much and to love the students so much. I had a very difficult
time stepping away from the class and going back to university teaching. I even
contemplated returning to full-time elementary teaching because I could clearly see
how much the students were learning and how much I enjoyed teaching them.
I began to question whether I was really making an impact on elementary teaching
while I was at the university. Do I really help more elementary students learn
science by preparing preservice and in-service teachers? Would I be better off going
back to full-time classroom teaching, which I loved, and impacting my own
elementary students in that way? And could I ever really know a classroom of
students from a researcher-only viewpoint in the same way I knew them from a
teaching viewpoint? Would I ever be able to fully understand a classroom in the
same way I understood this one, just by coming in and taking intermittent
observations as a researcher? I know I was not as good a math or social studies
teacher as I was a science teacher. My experience makes me wonder whether any
elementary teacher can be excellent in teaching all subjects and teach all standards
in all subjects. I think being in the role of the teacher also influenced my role as a
researcher, and I am ready to do more of both.
From my experience we can see that successful NOS instruction can be implemented in the classrooms of young children. The instruction that was successful
in improving the NOS understandings of these third graders was a combination
of contextualized and decontextualized (Clough 2006) explicit instruction,
embedded in inquiry instruction that began as guided inquiry and approached open
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inquiry by the end of the school year. Indeed, the students began taking more control
of their learning of NOS as the year progressed. I often did not need to prompt them
to debrief lessons with NOS aspects by the second half of the school year because
they began to do so in discussions themselves. Additionally, as I videotaped small
groups of students engaged in inquiries I noted that these students used terms such as
“empirical data,” “observation and inference,” and “tentative” (e.g., my “explanation is tentative until I look at the data more”) appropriately in conversations among
themselves during the second half of the year.
Again, I was an elementary teacher 15 years ago. However, my experience
seemed very long ago, not current, and in my attempt to update my university
teaching, I knew I needed to update my elementary teaching experience. This
experience of again being a full-time elementary teacher influenced me greatly,
renewing and reenergizing my own abilities to teach, as well as giving me great
respect for teachers who are currently working in the system.
As a university-elementary science educator, I have learned a lot about teaching
NOS from this experience that still translates into my methods courses. For
instance, I have learned it is not always easy to embed it into existing curricula,
yet it is possible with a bit of thought. I have learned that it is important to think
about overall goals for instruction and adjust the curriculum to fit those goals, not to
simply hope that the curriculum will “be there” to meet the goals. It is hard to
develop and adapt curricula for any content, and NOS is no exception. However, it
is clear to me that students can and should learn NOS, and I need to be aware of my
goals, my students, and my curriculum and use professional judgment to make
appropriate adjustments. As a university educator, I need to help my preservice
teachers be able to do what was very hard for me to do. Of course, all teaching is
difficult. The challenges of teaching change depending on the students and the
context. My own teaching of preservice teachers has included reflections on being
flexible and thinking about what students know about NOS at point A and what
we want them to know by point B and then reflecting on how to best get them there.
In essence, my NOS teaching focus mirrored what good teachers do when they are
thinking about teaching any content.
However, can we expect all elementary teachers to be able to teach NOS when so
many are not even teaching science or being told not to teach it by their
administrators because it is not being tested until intermediate grades? And most
elementary teachers are not science specialists nor do they have a science degree
and likely do not understand NOS themselves. Many are already intimidated by
their perceived lack of science content knowledge. However, might they not be less
intimidated if they held at least knowledge of what science is or a conceptualization
of NOS? If they knew that science was not solely a body of knowledge to be
memorized and developed through “the scientific method” and instead thought of
science as more creative, social, and a result of investigation through observation,
inference, and background knowledge, they may be more willing to teach science.
But even then, can any elementary teacher teach all school subjects at an equally
expert level? What would it take for any elementary teacher to expertly teach social
studies, science, mathematics, language arts, and other subjects to the level
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recommended in the national reforms? And if it is not possible, what should be
done? Perhaps specialists in the subject areas could be implemented, such as special
elementary science teachers being assigned to schools. However, does funding for
this exist, and if so, would it really be any better? If science specialists were in
place, would elementary students receive less science instruction than they typically already do? For example, my school had a P.E. specialist, and they had
P.E. twice a week for 25 min. If there were a science specialist, would my students
then have that specialist twice a week, for a total time of 50 min of science per
week? In my class, for contrast, students learned science about 50 min a day, which
is considerably more than the P.E. scenario. And if they went to a specialist, would
it have been easier or more difficult for me to use interdisciplinary instruction
through children’s literature and science notebooks and other communication
tools? I think it may have been more difficult for me to coordinate my subjects
and make connections. Plus, I would not be able to fully know my students in a way
that I could better teach them. We have much work to do, and we need to think
carefully about what we say “teachers should do. . ..”
References
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