Investigating Elementary Teachers’ Views, Implementation, and Longitudinal Enactment of Nature of Science Instruction

Abstract

During a 10-week professional physical science professional development (PD) course, elementary inservice teachers (n = 18) in a large urban district were engaged in explicit-reflective nature of science (NOS) instruction. Teachers were also explicitly engaged in reflection concerning NOS pedagogy (e.g., explicit-reflective, role of context). During the last 2 weeks of the PD course, teachers attempted to implement NOS instruction in their classrooms. Teachers submitted videos of their NOS teaching and written reflections about their videos. Then, 7 months later, teacher participants (n = 14) submitted videos of their science teaching. During the PD course, most teachers were able to implement effective explicit-reflective NOS instruction and their reflections indicated strong agreement between participants’ NOS pedagogical content knowledge and their enacted NOS instruction. 7 months later, just over one-third of participants continued to include explicit-reflective NOS instruction in their science teaching. NOS views, prior NOS pedagogical views, and prior NOS enactment did not account for longitudinal inclusion of effective NOS instruction. The role of teachers’ rationale for NOS and informal support networks are discussed.