Effect of Implicit Argumentation Education on PSTs' Understandings about NOS

Abstract

The aim of education programs in the recent years is to develop the understandings of prospective science teachers (PSTs) who may have some inadequate and naive views on comprehension and dimensions of nature of science (NOS). There have been a number of attempt to teach NOS as explicit and implicit. However, limited number of studies have been carried out in order to find out the effect of teaching based on implicit argumentation over PSTs’ understanding of NOS. This research gap motivated the present study. Action research was benefitted in the research. VNOS-C consisting of open-ended questions was used as data collection tool. Additionally interviews were carried out with PSTs (n=16). Content analysis with qualitative and interpretive approach was carried out for the qualitative data. Findings of the study indicated that teaching via implicit argumentation has a positive effect on PSTs’ understandings about NOS even though teaching the NOS elements was not the main purpose of the intervention.

Keywords

• Argumentation
• nature of science
• pre-service science teacher education