Nature of Science in Science Instruction: Rationales and Strategies

745 Pages·2020·14.708 MB·English

by  William F. McComas

Science: Philosophy, History and Education
William F. McComas  Editor
Nature of Science
in Science Instruction
Rationales and Strategies
Science: Philosophy, History and Education
Series Editor
Kostas Kampourakis, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland
Editorial Board
Fouad Abd-El-Khalick, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel
Hill, USA
María Pilar Jiménez Aleixandre, University of Santiago de Compostela, Santiago de
Compostela, Spain
Theodore Arabatzis, University of Athens, Athens, Greece
Sibel Erduran, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
Martin Kusch, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
Norman G. Lederman, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, USA
Alan C. Love, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities, Minneapolis, USA
Michael Matthews, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
Andreas Müller, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland
Ross Nehm, Stony Brook University (SUNY), Stony Brook, USA
Stathis Psillos, University of Athens, Athens, Greece
Michael Reiss, UCL Institute of Education, London, UK
Thomas Reydon, Leibniz Universität Hannover, Hannover, Germany
Bruno J. Strasser, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland
Marcel Weber, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland
Alice Siu Ling Wong, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
Michael P. Clough, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA
Scope of the Series
This book series serves as a venue for the exchange of the complementary
perspectives of science educators and HPS scholars. History and philosophy of
science (HPS) contributes a lot to science education and there is currently an
increased interest for exploring this relationship further. Science educators have
started delving into the details of HPS scholarship, often in collaboration with HPS
scholars. In addition, and perhaps most importantly, HPS scholars have come to
realize that they have a lot to contribute to science education, predominantly in two
domains: a) understanding concepts and b) understanding the nature of science. In
order to teach about central science concepts such as “force”, “adaptation”,
“electron” etc, the contribution of HPS scholars is fundamental in answering
questions such as: a) When was the concept created or coined? What was its initial
meaning and how different is it today? Accordingly, in order to teach about the
nature of science the contribution of HPS scholar is crucial in clarifying the
characteristics of scientific knowledge and in presenting exemplar cases from the
history of science that provide an authentic image of how science has been done.
The series aims to publish authoritative and comprehensive books and to establish
that HPS-informed science education should be the norm and not some special case.
This series complements the journal Science & Education http://www.springer.
com/journal/11191Book Proposals should be sent to the Publishing Editor at
[email protected]
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/13387
William F. McComas
Editor
Nature of Science in Science
Instruction
Rationales and Strategies
Editor
William F. McComas
University of Arkansas
College of Education & Health Professions
Fayetteville, AR, USA
ISSN 2520-8594 ISSN 2520-8608 (electronic)
Science: Philosophy, History and Education
ISBN 978-3-030-57238-9 ISBN 978-3-030-57239-6 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-57239-6
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature
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Foreword
It was more than 20 years ago that the book The Nature of Science in Science
Education: Rationales and Strategies, edited by William McComas, was published.
This has been one of the most widely read books about the nature of science (NOS)
ever published. Therefore a few years ago I proposed that it was time for us to have
a new, updated, and revised edition. Bill agreed and started immediately working on
the book. Eventually, the outcome is not the 20th anniversary edition I envisioned;
it is a new book with a targeted focus on teaching NOS, including updates from
several of the initial key contributors and a large and varied number of new ones.
Now we find 39 chapters, contributed by 68 authors across the spectrum of contem-
porary discussions on what NOS is and what and how we should teach about it. This
is a landmark book that will be very useful to science educators and teachers alike.
An important feature is that it is primarily a book for practitioners, those tasked with
teaching aspects of NOS effectively. However, its academic quality is high; the edi-
tor has made no compromise in that respect.
I have a personal story to share that highlights the usefulness of the present book.
I started working as a science teacher in 2001 without having undertaken a preser-
vice science teacher course (such courses were not, and still are not, compulsory in
Greece). When I started working, having a degree in biology and a master’s in
genetics, I did not even know that there was research in science education.
Nevertheless, I was lucky enough to be hired at Geitonas School, where there was
an active Department of Science Education. One of the science coordinators there,
Alexandros Apostolou, gave me the 1998 Nature of Science in Science Education
and suggested that I read it. Indeed, I did, and I suddenly realized how much our
students were missing without NOS in the curriculum. Eventually, we developed a
NOS course that was very successful, both in terms of impacting students’ attitudes
and their understanding. But what was more significant for me was the realization
of how much history and philosophy of science have to contribute to science educa-
tion. I am glad that several years later I am the editor of a book series and a major
journal that focus on exactly that.
v
vi Foreword
Perhaps the most influential chapter that I read was the one written by Bill him-
self (and significantly updated in this new volume) about the principal elements of
NOS and about dispelling the respective myths. I still remember how much that I
already knew started to come together and become meaningful while reading that
chapter. Myths abound in science education, and this is one reason that NOS has to
become a central curricular goal. What is more important, notwithstanding the dis-
cussions about what we ought to teach about NOS, is that while teaching I came to
realize that students had a number of strongly held preconceptions about what sci-
ence is and how it is done. Therefore, I have long argued that the teaching of NOS
should not begin by any normative standards, but rather by aiming to address stu-
dents’ preconceptions and to dispel the related myths: that there is a single scientific
method, that science is done by lonely geniuses, that scientific knowledge ought to
be certain, and more. The teaching of NOS should initially aim at a process of con-
ceptual change. Then, of course, this understanding should become more sophisti-
cated. Suggestions abound about how to achieve this in the present book.
Therefore, I am delighted to present this new book, which I believe will become
a landmark just like its predecessor. Bill McComas should be commended for bring-
ing together almost all scholars who have published on NOS during the last quarter
century while introducing many new voices and generally for delivering a book that
will become both an inspiration and useful tool for science teachers and science
teacher educators.
Geneva, Switzerland Kostas Kampourakis
Series Editor
Preface
Images of the nature of science (NOS) vary widely. The translation of NOS to the
K-16 science education curriculum has been a long-standing goal and a central pil-
lar of the recent Standards Movement, in the USA and elsewhere. The NOS images
recommended for inclusion in science education range along a continuum that runs
from broad domain-general features of scientific practices and values at one end to
narrower domain-specific “science-in-the-making” depictions of building knowl-
edge at the other extreme. Over the decades of the twentieth century, scholars have
taken various stances (e.g., epistemological, ontological, historical, pedagogical,
feminist, psychological, sociological, and economical) to represent how scientific
knowledge is established and changes and how best to communicate about science
as a way of knowing. While writing this preface, the New Horizons satellite has
beamed back images at the edge of our solar system from a distance that takes 6
hours to reach Earth traveling at the speed of light. The Mars rover “Opportunity”
has completed a 15-year mission as a robotic geologist. A lunar vehicle successfully
landed on the dark side of the Moon with a satellite positioned to stream back, for
the first time, dark side live surface images. All are examples of STEM disciplines
working in integrated ways to build knowledge. We have learned how to learn.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is being increasingly deployed in our lives to monitor
and intervene in social, educational, and political decision making. We are learning
how to learn about learning.
Over the past century there have been complex developments regarding the phil-
osophical and historical characterizations about NOS and the pedagogical frame-
works for teaching NOS.
But when did teaching about NOS become a goal for science education? How did
images about the NOS become a targeted curriculum topic and a learning goal for
K-16 science education? From a US perspective, the decade of interest is the 1950s.
In that decade, post-war developments in the sciences, mathematics, and engineering
shifted from industry efforts alone (e.g., General Electric, Westinghouse) to broader
vii
viii Preface
federal agendas with the formation of the National Science Foundation. Then, as
now, the focus is on developing new knowledge for a competitive workforce to steer
our science-and-technology-driven economies, e.g., agriculture, health and medi-
cine, telecommunications, artificial intelligence, and energy, among others.
The catalyst for rapidly changing the face of K-12 science education in the 1950s
was the US reaction to the launching of the USSR satellite Sputnik. Within a single
decade, 1955 to 1965, hundreds of millions of dollars were invested in the develop-
ment of curriculum and facilities, employing a top-down process from high schools
first followed by middle and elementary grades. Once the curricula were estab-
lished, NSF funding was directed to teacher institutes to prepare staff to teach these
new inquiry-based science programs. Scholarly writings on this period of science
education can be found in John Rudolph’s Scientists in the Classroom and George
DeBoer’s A History of Ideas in Science Education.
In post-secondary education the catalyst was Harvard University and then
President James Bryant Conant’s development of the Harvard Case Studies in
History of Science course project. The course was designed for returning WWII GIs
enrolling in non-science degree programs. The goal was to prepare the veterans for
leadership roles in the rapidly emerging new science-and-technology-based indus-
tries. The adopted strategy was to use “historical case studies” to introduce and
nurture rich understandings of the “tactics and strategies” employed in developing
scientific knowledge. Criteria for selecting the cases included illustrating one or
more of the tactics and strategies of science:
• Revealing the evolution of new conceptual schemes as a result of
experimentation
• Detailing advances in science, e.g., the progress taking place
• Making distinctions between advances in mechanical contrivances (tools) or
primitive chemical process (metallurgy or soapmaking) and advances in sci-
ence (discovery of oxygen, cell theory)
• Revealing the symbiotic nature of industry and science (agriculture, medi-
cine, electricity, and telecommunications)
Leo Klopfer adapted the case studies program for use in high school programs:
History of Science Cases or HOSC. William Cooley and Leo developed the first
NOS instrument “Test on Understanding Science” or TOUS to assess the impact of
HOSC on learning. The 60-item TOUS focused on three themes:
Understanding about scientists – e.g., generalizations about scientists as people,
institutional pressures on scientists, and abilities needed by scientists
Understanding about scientific enterprise – e.g., communication among scientists,
scientific societies, instruments, international character of science, and interac-
tion of science and society
Understanding about methods and aims of science – e.g., theories and models, con-
troversies in science, science and technology, generalities about scientific
method, and unity and interdependence of the sciences
Preface ix
From the 1950s to 1990s developments taking place in the learning sciences and
within science studies academic communities – history, philosophy, sociology,
anthropologies, and economics of science – ignited our understandings of how we
have learned how to learn about nature. But this scientific interrogation of nature
has also ignited our understandings of how to learn about learning and the design of
learning environments as well. John Rudolph’s new book How We Teach Science:
How It’s Changed and Why It Matters, Harvard Education Press, scrutinizes the
various efforts, policies, and products that constitute the emergence of science edu-
cation through the lens of teaching the scientific method. What he presents is much
more than a descriptive narrative of events, institutions, and people involved in sci-
ence education. Rudolph has crafted an engaging tapestry of how political, eco-
nomic, pedagogical, psychological, philosophical, and technological forces have all
influenced and been influenced by matters of science causing the focus of science
education to swing back and forth between teaching science knowledge and teach-
ing scientific methods, processes, and practices.
The parade of science over the last 300 years has been dynamic, to say the least.
New tools, technologies, and theories have shaped science pathways first in physics
and chemistry for the early paradigmatic sciences; in population biology through
Darwinian evolution and the Great Synthesis and on to molecular biology and medi-
cal sciences; in quantum mechanics; in materials, communication, and information
sciences; in geosciences and Earth systems sciences; and in neurosciences and brain
sciences, to name but a few. Advancements in science over the centuries have
spawned multiple philosophical perspectives to account for the thinking and growth
of knowledge therein. Over the last 100 years there were three major periods in
philosophy of science:
1. The experiment-based hypothesis testing view that gave us logical positivism,
logical empiricism, and deductive-nomological explanations to account for the
justification of scientific knowledge claims
2. The history-based view of theory development and conceptual change that gave
us paradigms, research programs, heuristic principles, scientific thema, and
research traditions to account for the rational growth of scientific knowledge
3. The model-based view of cognitive and social dynamics among communities of
scholars that gave us social epistemology, naturalized philosophy of science, and
accompanying epistemologies to account for the deepening and broadening of
scientific explanations
In his book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn postulates that
the characteristic feature of scientific revolutions is a period when fundamental
beliefs clash with competing ideas when paradigmatic shifts are being contemplated
by communities of scientists. Kuhn refers to this period as moving into “Crisis”;
others imposed the term Chaos. During Crisis period, different competing theories
and models vie to explain the established knowledge claims while also reconciling
the mounting number of anomalies generated by the old paradigms. Periods of
reconstructing group commitments, with all the competing perspectives, are seen by
Kuhn as a necessary dynamic for the growth of scientific knowledge and the main-
tenance of scientific communities.