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Nature of Science

The document discusses the nature of science (NOS), which refers to the characteristics of scientific knowledge. It is an important part of scientific literacy that allows students to understand science concepts and make informed decisions. NOS is informed by both scientific practices and decades of research on gathering and testing information about the natural world through various research methods. All those involved in science teaching should have an accurate understanding of NOS and teach it explicitly along with other science concepts. The document clarifies that NOS refers specifically to the characteristics of scientific knowledge, rather than how knowledge is developed, and aims to improve upon previous understandings of this topic.

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49 views3 pages

Nature of Science

The document discusses the nature of science (NOS), which refers to the characteristics of scientific knowledge. It is an important part of scientific literacy that allows students to understand science concepts and make informed decisions. NOS is informed by both scientific practices and decades of research on gathering and testing information about the natural world through various research methods. All those involved in science teaching should have an accurate understanding of NOS and teach it explicitly along with other science concepts. The document clarifies that NOS refers specifically to the characteristics of scientific knowledge, rather than how knowledge is developed, and aims to improve upon previous understandings of this topic.

Uploaded by

ndaarmy16
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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NATURE OF SCIENCE

Nature of science (NOS) is a critical


component of scientific literacy that
enhances students’ understandings of
science concepts and enables them to make
informed decisions about scientifically-based
personal and societal issues. NOS is derived
not only from the eight science practices
delineated in the Framework for K–12
Science Education (2012), but also from
decades of research supporting the various
forms of systematic gathering of information
through direct and indirect observations of
the natural world and the testing of this
information by the various research methods
used in science, such as descriptive,
correlational, and experimental designs. All
science educators and those involved with
science teaching and learning should have a
shared accurate view of nature of scientific
knowledge, and recognize that NOS should
be taught explicitly alongside science and
engineering practices, disciplinary core
ideas, and crosscutting concepts.
It is important to know that this new iteration
of NOS improves upon the previous NSTA
position statement on this topic (NSTA 2000)
that used the label “nature of science,”
which included a combination of
characteristics of scientific knowledge (NOS)
and scientific inquiry. It demonstrated the
common conflation of how scientific
knowledge is developed and its
characteristics. Since the recent NSTA
position statement on science practices,
previously referred to as

“inquiry” (NSTA 2018), clearly delineates how


knowledge is developed in science, a more
appropriate label for the focus of this
position statement would be “nature of
scientific knowledge” (NOSK). This would
clarify the difference between how
knowledge is developed from the
characteristics of the resulting knowledge.
Clearly the two are closely related, but they
are different (Lederman & Lederman 2014).
However, introducing a new label (i.e.,
NOSK), given that the NGSS refers to the
characteristics of scientific knowledge as
NOS, would create more confusion. It will be
clear that the discussion of NOS here is
about the characteristics of scientific
knowledge. Additionally, the word “the” is
removed preceding NOS to avoid implying
that a single set of knowledge
characteristics exists.

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