Improving Students’ Conceptions of Nature of Science: A Review of the Literature

The goal of all reform documents in science education is to target scientific literacy. Toward that end, having students understand the nature of science (NOS) is a critical component. As it turns out, the development of NOS conceptions is a cognitive learning outcome. Therefore, an explicit approach needs to be promoted and emphasized in the classrooms to address students’ conceptions of NOS. At the same time, the development of NOS conceptions among learners is context dependent. Consequently, different learning frameworks might influence the NOS conceptions of learners in various ways. There are several frameworks to contextualize NOS instruction in relation to three different contexts: history of science (HOS), scientific inquiry (SI), and socioscientific issues (SSI). As such, the aim of this study was to review studies on NOS instruction, categorize the reviewed studies into different contexts, and investigate the effect of these different contexts on the improvement in students’ conceptions of NOS. As a conclusion, implications for future research and classroom practice related to the explicit teaching about NOS in these contexts were discussed.