Most discipline-based education researchers (DBERs) were formally trained in the methods of scientific disciplines such as biology, chemistry, and physics, rather than social science disciplines such as psychology and education. As a result, DBERs may have never taken specific courses in the social science research methodology--either quantitative…

The social reaction to the recent detection of the Higgs boson and gravitational waves provided evidence that public interest in modern physics has reached a high point. Although these modern physics topics are being introduced into the upper secondary physics curricula in a growing number of countries, their potential for teaching various aspects…

This study considers the short list of Nature of Science (NOS) features frequently published and widely known in the science education discourse. It is argued that these features were oversimplified and a refinement of the claims may enrich or sometimes reverse them. The analysis shows the need to address the range of variation in each particular…

The basic premise of this paper is the fact that science has become a major industry: the knowledge industry. The paper throws some light on the reasons for the transformation of science from a limited, constrained and marginal craft into a major industry. It, then, presents a productivist industrial model of knowledge production, which shows its…

There is widespread agreement that an adequate understanding of the nature of science (NOS) is a critical component of scientific literacy and a major goal in science education. However, we still do not know many specific details regarding how students and teachers learn particular aspects of NOS and what are the most important feature traits of…

There is a gap between the facts learned in a science course and the higher-cognitive skills of analysis and evaluation necessary for students to secure scientific knowledge and scientific habits of mind. Teaching science is not just about how we do science (i.e., focusing on just "accumulating undigested facts and scientific definitions and…

An adequate understanding of the nature of science (NOS) is essential for science teachers. The Myths of Science Questionnaire (MOSQ) consisting of 14 items, which comprised both optional and written types of response, was utilized to explore 113 Thai preservice and 101 inservice science teachers' understanding and reasoning about the NOS,…

This study explored Bangladeshi science teachers' conceptions of nature of science (NOS) with a particular focus on the nature of (a) scientific knowledge, (b) scientific inquiry and (c) scientific enterprise. The tentative, inferential, subjective and creative NOS, in addition to the myths of the scientific method and experimentation, the nature…

Understanding of the Nature of Science (NOS) serves as one of the desirable characteristics of science teachers. The current study attempted to explore 101 Thai in-service science teachers' conceptions of the NOS, particularly scientific knowledge, the scientific method, scientists' work, and scientific enterprise, by using the Myths of Science…

One hundred years after its conception, the scientific method continues to reinforce a kind of cultural lore about what it means to participate in inquiry. As commonly implemented in venues ranging from middle school classrooms to undergraduate laboratories, it emphasizes the testing of predictions rather than ideas, focuses learners on material…

Classic experiments and novel ideas in the history of science are often mentioned in passing in contemporary college-level science curricula. This study indicates that the detailed and creative recapitulation of a few well-chosen and famous, if well-known, results and ideas has the potential to increase students' understanding and appreciation of…

Biomedical data science education faces the challenge of preparing students for conducting rigorous research with increasingly complex and large datasets. At the same time, philosophers of science face the challenge of making their expertise accessible for scientists in such a way that it can improve everyday research practice. Here, we…

The notion of family resemblance has recently emerged as a promising and fruitful approach to characterising the nature of science (NOS) in science education research, offering solutions to some perplexing challenges such as capturing both the domain-general and domain-specific features of science with a single framework. At the same time,…

The COVID-19 pandemic provides an opportunity for teachers to explicitly address nature of science (NOS) themes during instruction. Aligned with key NOS categories in the "Next Generation Science Standards," this article discusses events and trends from the pandemic that teachers can use to help students understand values and methods of…

Many studies have characterized students' difficulties in understanding and reasoning about scientific mechanisms. Some of those studies have drawn implications on teaching mechanisms and how to guide students while reasoning mechanistically. In this theoretical article, I claim that one component that has not garnered much attention in the…