Improving eighth graders' views of the nature of science using an explicit reflective activity-based instruction

The aim of this study is to investigate the influence of an explicit reflective activity based instruction on eighth graders' conceptions of nature of science. In this particular study, nature of science was taught in a noncontextualized way through a set of activities that specifically addressed a variety of nature of science issues and were dispersed across the science content. A total of 13 eight-grade students participated in the explicit reflective activities to improve their views of nature of science. The intervention was engaged in inquiry activities followed by reflective discussions of the targeted nature of science aspects. To assess participants' views of nature of science, an open-ended questionnaire was used both before and after the instruction. Results indicated that the majority of participants held naive views of the targeted nature of science aspects at the beginning and there was moderate improvement in participants' views of nature of science after the instruction. Consequently, results revealed that more than half of participants articulated informed views and the improvement for each aspect of nature of science was statistically meaningful.