• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.28 no.7
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• pp.749-758
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• 2008

Even though the importance of the nature of science (NOS) and scientific inquiry in science learning have been emphasized by many science educators and science curriculums, the link between the NOS and scientific inquiry has not been discussed sufficiently. In this article, I discussed that various aspects of NOS are already embedded in defining and characterizing the authentic scientific inquiry and that we need to have special concern about how the NOS should be treated and interpreted when introducing it into scientific inquiry. And I summarized two approaches to teach the NOS and scientific inquiry; teaching the NOS through scientific inquiry and teaching scientific inquiry through the NOS. Finally, some next studies based on this article are introduced.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.169-179
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• 2008

In this study, 46 teaching materials for understanding the nature of science (NOS) were developed based on the 42 statements describing the NOS. Each teaching material involves scientific knowledge and scientific inquiry skills as well as NOS statements. Teaching materials consist of students' learning worksheets and teachers' guides. Among the materials, 11 materials for understanding the nature of scientific thinking (NOST) were applied to 3 scientifically gifted students. As results, the degree of difficulty was appropriate and students showed interests in scientific thinking rather than new concepts or inquiry activities involved in the materials. It was expected that understating the NOST would be helpful for conducting scientific inquiry in more authentic way. And similarly to the Park's (2007) theoretical discussions about the relationship between the NOS and scientific creativity, students actually responded that undertrading the NOST could help their creativity. Therefore, it was expected that teaching the NOST would be plausible elements for teaching scientific creativity.