John Randolph

Perspectives: Helping Students Understand the Nature of Science

Mon, Jun 13, 2011 10:45 PM
Science and the Need for Creativity

This article discusses the gap young students have in their understandings and comprehensions of what science entails. Researchers posed various questions to different groups of fourth and fifth graders. They found that the majority of students believed that their textbooks contained “unchanging scientific truth and that science has little room for creativity…” (p. 64). Young students are continually bombarded by images from the media of science and scientists that promote misconceptions and myths about the nature of science. One example comes from an interview of fourth grade students who believed that science is based solely on what can be observed directly. Students also have misconceptions that scientists are always right and that science is not a continuum! According to the article, we constantly learn from the past and make educated guesses about the future. Science is ever changing. We are continually trying to disprove in order to prove an idea or theory. This dichotomy must be understood in order to promote the necessary creativity and imagination needed to invent explanations for phenomena that are not directly observed. Science is at a point where inference has become the backbone of understanding. When teaching the nature of science, modeling is not enough. It must become a “purposeful and explicit part of classroom lessons…for students to develop their understanding” (p. 64). Students need to grasp the idea that science is tentative. The answers scientists have now are based on past and present research and are considered reasonable yet cautious. This means that scientists understand that future research could disprove what is already known. Students tend to think that what is known is not going to change. This creates an enormous barrier to freethinking. It is important for students to understand that the science process never stops; thus, the nature of science.