Changes of Students' Understanding of the Nature of Science After Two and Half Years of Public Science Education in Ontario Canada

A longitudinal study traced changes in students' understanding of Nature Of science (NOS) through the public secondary science education in Ontario Canada. Although the concepts of NOS are complicated, and students' understandings are not easy to change, not many longitudinal studies have been done across the world. The current study tried to identify the changes of participating students' understandings of NOS for two and half years of public secondary science education in Ontario Canada. Pretest was administered using Views of Nature of Science (VNOS-C) when six participants graduated from a middle school of Toronto. Two and half years of secondary education, the posttest was carried out using the same instrument. After pre and posttest, probing interviews were performed. The analysis of the data was founded on the Standards and the conceptual framework for this study. The findings were that the initial views have little changed. Most examples and explanations the participants provided were from their science classes. Lab activities for confirming the existing laws and theories and observable photos in science textbooks made students regard the knowledge as a truth. Naturally, their knowledge has been expanded for 2 and 1/2 years, but this expansion of scientific knowledge led students toward Universalist views on science. On the other hand, when science was presented with a historical approach or was networked with other concepts, students acknowledged science and scientific knowledge had been induced from inferences as well as observations and experimental results. Based on the findings the authors of this research suggest that educating the knowledge of science should be historical and networked approaches rather than teaching the knowledge as concise and true statements of the nature.