Teachers' Ideas About the Nature of Science: A Critical Analysis of Research Approaches and Their Contribution to Pedagogical Practice

This paper looks into research aimed to elicit teachers' ideas about science through the development of resources as questionnaires, problematic tasks and interviews. It is focused on how those ideas are conceptualised and how such conceptualisations have been reflected in the methodological approaches adopted and the advantages and disadvantages of research instruments. This analysis suggests four broad categories to group studies considering substantially different perspectives on teachers' knowledge. Drawing upon the general finding that teachers tend to develop stereotypical views connected to science, there is an attempt to respond to the question of why such views are not sustainable from an educational point of view. A salient conclusion is that the large majority of such research remains marginal in informing pedagogical practice and faces serious conceptual and methodological challenges. It is also claimed that those studies adopting pedagogical embedded view of ideas about science do illuminate the way forward. The paper ends with a discussion on the implications of teachers' images of the world of science in their practice.