Evaluation of Secondary School Science Teachers’ Knowledge about Nature of Science

Abstract

Science teachers in Pakistan teach science in a way that adds to the mythology of science. These myths and misconceptions may be due to misunderstandings of nature of science. Therefore, this study was designed to evaluate the knowledge of science teachers about nature of science (NOS). The objectives of study were to find out chemistry teachers’ understanding about: content, content situated nature of science and nature of science. Moreover, to find out relationship between content understandings, content situated NOS understanding and NOS understanding. The approach was quantitative; questionnaire was used to collect the data. The population of the study comprised of male and female secondary school science teachers who were teaching chemistry at secondary level in government schools of Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJ&K). 105 secondary school science teachers; 59 females and 46 males were selected as sample of study through simple random sampling technique. Findings of study indicated that chemistry teachers did not understand content, content situated nature of science and nature of science. Content understanding, content situated nature of science understanding and understanding were positively significantly correlated with each other. It was recommended that capacity building programs for in-service science teachers may be designed immediately. Inclusion of nature of science in teacher training programs, in curriculum, in assessment, at all levels from school to university is recommended. It was recommended that prospective teachers may be provided opportunities to situate their nature of science learning in their lesson plans.

Keywords: Nature of Science, Subject matter knowledge, content situated Nature of Science, scientific literacy, secondary level