과학의 본성에 대한 예비과학교사들의 인식 분석

Abstract

It has been emphasized that scientific literacy is a necessary quality of individual who will live in democratized future science technology era. Scientific literacy is also well illustrated in the goal of domestic and foreign science curricular and additionally it requires understanding and application of science knowledge, scientific inquiry, and profound understanding of NOS (Nature of Science). However, learning science concepts is still main purpose in science classes of domestic elementary and secondary schools. Explicit NOS instruction has not been given well and furthermore, teachers are lack of understanding of NOS. Because actual teaching activities of teacher are decided by their PCK (Pedagogy Content Knowledge) or understanding of the subject, this study is to grasp the recognition on NOS of Science Preservice Teachers who are in initial stage of their expertise to be a teacher. This study analyzed nine aspects of NOS; (1)empirical-based, (2)Observation, (3)Inference, (4)Creativity, (5)Subjectivity, (6)Tentativeness, (7)Scientific Method, (8)Theories & Law and its relation, (9)Social/Cultural embeddedness, by using VNOS Form-C which is an open questionnaire in terms of Naïve View and Informed View. The participants of this study were preservice teachers who majored in Earth Science Education and ranged from freshman to senior. As a result of VNOS Form-C to science preservice teachers, Informed View was highly understood in aspects of ‘Subjectivity’, ‘Tentativeness’, ‘Social/Cultural embeddedness’. It is interpreted that because examples in the questionnaire consisted of science content what participants were familiar with, they could express their viewpoints on NOS with full understanding. As for the ’Theories & Law’, even though the response rate of Naïve View was higher than Informed View, there was not significantly different. Even if these view were unfamiliar to science preservice teachers, Informed View were also drawn as well as Naïve View, owing to the influence of a lecturer, because science preservice teachers learned various theories, relationship between theories and law, and the process of development of theories through earth science classes in comparison with other science areas. There had been some aspects where preservice teachers did not respond at all such as ‘empirical-based’, ‘Observation’, ‘Inference’, ‘Creativity’, ‘Scientific Method’, which revealed that science preservice teachers could little understood those aspects of NOS. It can be illustrated that preservice teachers participating in this study little understood those NOS because they had never studied those issues. It can be concluded that level of recognition of NOS by science preservice teachers who participated in this study was high, low or little depending on how much they were familiar/not familiar/instructed/not instructed with science content in survey carried out in this study. Therefore, when teachers-to-be who will teach NOS, it is critical for them to learn how to teach NOS in the context of science content which they can in turn teach students NOS explicitly. This study implies that the establishment of NOS course in the curriculum for preservice teachers’ preparation program at universities must be considered and the explicit teaching NOS for development of PCK must be considered as one of explicit teaching strategies.