Developing and acting upon one's conception of the nature of science: A follow-up study

This study aimed to delineate the factors mediating the translation of pres ervice teachers' conceptions of the nature of science into instructional pl anning and classroom practice. Additionally, the study assessed the influen ce of temporally separating teaching preservice teachers about the nature o f science and teaching them how to address it instructionally. This latter intervention was based on the results of a previous investigation. Prior to student teaching, the 13 participants responded to an open-ended questionn aire designed to assess conceptions of the nature of science. Throughout st udent teaching, daily lesson plans, classroom videotapes, portfolios, and s upervisors' weekly clinical observation notes were collected and searched f or explicit instances of nature of science planning and/or instruction. Fol lowing student teaching, participants were interviewed to validate their re sponses to the open-ended questionnaire, identify factors that mediate the translation of their conceptions of the nature of science into classroom te aching, and explicate their pedagogical preferences for teaching the nature of science. Participants possessed adequate understanding of several aspec ts of the nature of science and, contrary to the results of the earlier inv estigation, most did not conflate the nature of science with science proces ses. Furthermore, several participants explicitly addressed some aspects of the nature of science during classroom instruction. Participants, however, failed to include the nature of science among their instructional objectiv es and did not make a concerted effort to assess student understandings. (C ) 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.