Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
International Journal of Learning, cilt.16, sa.10, ss.597-606, 2009 (Scopus)
Science education programs aim to introduce students to basic concepts of nature of science (NOS) and, consequently develop scientifically literate person. Science teacher is an important actor to achieve this goal. Hence, educating science teachers with a contemporary view of NOS becomes an important issue in science education. For this reason, the purpose of the study was to examine the impact of in-service education program on elementary science teachers' views of NOS. A total of 44 (24 Female, 20 Male) elementary science teachers with a teaching experience ranged from 1 to 21 years participated in one week intensive summer in-service program. Participants were engaged in different activities that explicitly addressed seven target aspects of NOS. The Views of Nature of Science (VNOS-C) questionnaire (Lederman, Schwartz, Abd-El-Khalick, and Bell, 2001) was used to determine teachers' initial views of NOS, and was administered again at the end of program as pre-post tests to determine changes in teachers' views. During data analysis, each participant was treated as separate case and data from each questionnaire was used to generate in-depth profile of participants' NOS views related with seven NOS aspects. The results of the current study described trends and shifts in participants' views of NOS. In general, at the end of the in-service program majority of science teachers demonstrated improvements in their understanding of some NOS aspects. © Common Ground, Jale Cakiroglu, Nihal Dogan, Kader Bilican, Seda Cavus, Orhan Arslan.