Painting an Accurate Picture of the Nature of Science

Authors

Jesse Wilcox, Valley Southwoods Freshman High SchoolFollow
Elizabeth Potter, Lakes Community High SchoolFollow

Document Type

Article

Abstract

Understanding the nature of science (NOS) is an essential part of scientific literacy (McComas, 1998; Robinson, 1969; Shamos, 1995; Abd-El-Khalick & Lederman, 2000). When the NOS is taught in context-related inquiry activities and historical examples all school year, students show improvement in NOS understanding (Kruse, 2008; Khishfe & Abd-El-Khalick, 2002) that persists into the next academic year (Clough, 1995). Even so, educators often struggle with how to accurately and explicitly incorporate the NOS in an already packed curriculum. This article presents an activity that explains how science content and the NOS can both be effectively taught at the same time. This article promotes the National Science Education Content Standards A, B, and G and the Iowa Teaching Standards 2, 3, 4, and 5.

Publication Date

Spring 2008

Journal Title

Iowa Science Teachers Journal

Volume

35

Issue

2

First Page

21

Last Page

24

Copyright

© Copyright 2008 by the Iowa Academy of Science

Language

en

File Format

application/pdf

Recommended Citation

Wilcox, Jesse and Potter, Elizabeth (2008) "Painting an Accurate Picture of the Nature of Science," Iowa Science Teachers Journal: Vol. 35: No. 2, Article 6.
Available at: https://scholarworks.uni.edu/istj/vol35/iss2/6