Portuguese science teachers' views aboutnature of science and scientific models

Nature of Science (NOS) and Scientific Models are considered to be crucial issues in science education. Thus, and considering that teachers' views strongly influence students' learning experience, our main purpose was to assess Portuguese Science Teachers' (PST) views of NOS and Scien...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Torres, Joana, Moutinho, Sara, Almeida, António, Vasconcelos, Clara
Format: article
Publication Date:2013
Country:España
Institution:Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Repository:Dipòsit Digital de Documents de la UAB
Language:English
OAI Identifier:oai:ddd.uab.cat:175666
Online Access:https://ddd.uab.cat/record/175666
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:Nature of science
Scientific models
Teachers' views
Description
Summary:Nature of Science (NOS) and Scientific Models are considered to be crucial issues in science education. Thus, and considering that teachers' views strongly influence students' learning experience, our main purpose was to assess Portuguese Science Teachers' (PST) views of NOS and Scientific Models. With this work we also intended to get some information about PST classroom practice when it comes to models.A survey questionnaire was applied to a sample of one hundred and twenty-nine middle and secondary school PST, from different regions of the country. Results revealsome naïve views regarding NOS issues and some inconsistences in the definition of scientific models. Moreover, teachers show that they give more emphasis to the value of models in the learning of science over their value in the learning to do science and about science.