New Perspectives in Science Education

Nature of science (NOS) has been a key area of research in science education for numerous decades. A significant amount of this research has been based on what is typically called the “consensus view” of NOS. Recently based on some critiques of the consensus view, some new perspectives on the definition of NOS have been recommended including philosophers Irzik and Nola’s (2014) version based on what’s called the “Family Resemblance Approach” (FRA).  As Erduran & Dagher (2014) illustrate, FRA provides a useful framework for organizing science curriculum and instruction around science as an cognitive-epistemic system and science as an institutional-social system.  This ‘systems’ approach to organizing science curriculum and instruction ensures that understanding the nature of science is holistic and comprehensive revolving around key spheres of epistemic and social practices that are grounded in relevant historical or current contexts. In this paper, we present a model of NOS that is holistic and inclusive of the cognitive-epistemic and social-institutional dimensions of science and provide a framework for its integration into pre-service science teacher education to enhance understanding of NOS. The paper will include examples of activities used with pre-service science teachers as well as a description and rationale for the teacher training aspects.