An Exploratory Investigation of 12-Year-Old Students' Ability to Appreciate Certain Aspects of the Nature of Science through a Specially Designed Approach in the Context of Energy

Abstract

We describe the implementation of a specially designed teaching innovation, embedded in the context of energy, for the promotion of specific aspects of the nature of science (NOS). We present empirical results from the implementation of the teaching and learning materials in three intact sixth-grade classes that involved a total of 64 students. We report on students' learning gains and we discuss the ensuing implications for teaching and learning with an emphasis on epistemic ideas. The integration of activities promoting understandings of energy and specific aspects of the NOS seems to work well in impacting on students' epistemic awareness. The findings reveal interesting aspects about the interplay between understandings of energy and the NOS. The article also illustrates that it is possible to teach productively specific aspects of a consensus view of the NOS from a fairly young age without having to rely on advanced science knowledge or explore the intricacies and differentiations across science disciplines.

Keywords:

• Nature or science
• Energy teaching and learning
• Epistemic discourse

Notes

1. The number of the students who responded to each of the task was slightly lower than this (the exact number is given in the table that presents the results for each task). The reason for this discrepancy is that some students were absent during the administration of certain tasks and it was not possible to access them in the immediately following days.

2. The distributions of the responses to the various categories prior to and after the use of the teaching materials were compared using the Wilcoxon signed-rank test.

3. The activity referred to by the students involves a pattern of two different marks, which student typically interpreted as traces left by two birds. At some point of the drawing, the two marks intersect. After that, one of the trails disappears. Thus, it would not be valid to conclude that after the two birds had met, each headed in a different direction.