Designing Stories of Scientific Discoveries to Facilitate Preservice Teachers Understanding of Nature of Science

Abstract

Scientific discoveries are the building blocks of scientific knowledge. However, science textbooks often depict this knowledge as definitive and unchanging, omitting the evolving process behind these findings. Although science education grants importance to discoveries, its presentation in textbooks is seemingly arbitrary, often leaving out important discoveries and scientists associated with it. Textbook descriptions lack depth and context resulting in a disconnect between the said discovery and the concept being taught. This, research has shown, impacts students understanding and interest in science. Indian education policy documents NCF 2023, NEP 2020 and NCF 2005 recognize the importance of NOS in science education and advocate its inclusion in science education. This policy intent needs to be supported strongly by equipping science teachers with NOS concepts. Further, they also need to be provided with well-designed NOS resources which they can integrate seamlessly in their classrooms with adequate training. Research shows that NOS can be efficiently communicated through stories of scientific discoveries. Creating a repository of such stories can meet the dual need of providing NOS instruction to teachers and serve as a robust NOS resource for them to teach their students. This research addressed this dual need. It is cast in methodological framework of design-based research (DBR) having four distinct phases. The first phase of the DBR, the exploratory study explored science teachers understanding of aims and pedagogies of teaching science and their current NOS knowledge. For most teachers, the primary aim of teaching science was to help students understand daily life. When inquiring about the pedagogical methods employed in science education, only two out of 25 (4%) teachers identified storytelling as a pedagogical approach, and it was not among their initial responses.