Exploring Preservice Science Teachers’ Views on Nature of Science

The purposes of this study were to explore understanding of preservice science teachers’ (PSTs) nature of science (NOS) views during the explicit-reflective and inquiry-based laboratory instruction and investigate PSTs’ perspectives and experiences related to learning NOS aspects in the science laboratory course. The design of the study was qualitative and exploratory in nature. In the initial phase of the study, the researcher collected qualitative data with open-ended questionnaire to explore PSTs’ NOS views. Then,during the semester, reflection papers were collected to understand PSTs’ experiences with the intervention and to detect development about each NOS aspect. At the end of the semester, qualitative questionnaire and semi-structured interviews were conducted to determine the impact of the explicit-reflective and inquiry-based laboratory instruction.The results showed that all of the PSTs were able to make appropriate connections among the laboratory activities and the targeted NOS aspects at the end of the instruction.In addition, many PSTs developed their understanding levels of each aspect of NOS.