Reconsidering the 'nature of science' as a curriculum component

Although the nature of science has long been seen as an important, indeed c entral, component of science education during this century, efforts to inte grate an authentic view of the nature of science into the curriculum have o ften met with little success. Work in the field of science studies since th e 1960s has compounded this difficulty by presenting educators with various competing, often conflicting, views of the essence of scientific inquiry. I discuss previous attempts to come to grips with this fundamental issue of how to deal with the competing views of science and suggest an alternative approach for integrating nature of science issues into the school science curriculum. What is needed is for educators to accept that no single nature of science exists and to develop curricula that help students understand i nstead the diverse, local practices that are found within and across scient ific disciplines.