The Influence of an Activity-Based Explicit Approach on the Turkish Prospective Science Teachers’ Conceptions of the Nature of Science

The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of an activity-based explicit nature of science (NOS) instruction undertaken in the context of a “Science, Technology and Society” course on the prospective science teachers’ (PSTs’) understandings of NOS. In this course, social science based inquiry activities were used to as a context to lead reflection and explicit discussions and project based learning approach (PBL) was used to model an active student centred NOS teaching and learning. Participants were 36 senior PSTs. An adopted form of VNOS questionnaire along with semi-structured interviews was used to assess participants’ conceptions before and after the instruction. Data were analysed both qualitatively and quantitatively. It was found that the majority of PSTs hold naïve or mixed views about most aspects of NOS at the beginning of the instruction. The post assessment indicated a substantial development in the participants' conceptions about many aspects of science; however, little change took place for either conceptions related to the social and cultural influences on science or creativity and imagination in science. It is recommended that research should be undertaken to investigate influence of explicit NOS teaching on facilitating transition of NOS understandings to NOS teaching.