Open AccessProspective primary teachers’ views on the nature of science
Author(s) -
Rafael Amador-Rodríguez,
Agustín Adúriz–Bravo,
Jorge Valencia Cobos,
Roberto Reinoso,
Jaime Delgado Iglesias
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
journal of technology and science education
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.351
H-Index - 9
eISSN - 2014-5349
pISSN - 2013-6374
DOI - 10.3926/jotse.1271
Subject(s) - positivism , period (music) , philosophy of science , nature of science , logical positivism , history and philosophy of science , rationalism , epistemology , mathematics education , science education , normal science , likert scale , natural (archaeology) , sociology , psychology , social science , philosophy , history , developmental psychology , archaeology , aesthetics
This article presents the results of a piece of research that analyzed the views on the nature of science (NOS) among student teachers enrolled in programs of Primary Education at two public universities in Spain. Previous studies have reported that science teachers maintain ‘eclectic’ epistemological perspectives on science; in this article, we test if such a hypothesis holds when teachers’ NOS ideas are ‘anchored’ in specific periods and topics of the philosophy of science. We studied 114 prospective teachers attending an undergraduate teaching course with emphasis on the natural sciences at the Universities of Burgos and Valladolid in the period of 2017-18. A Likert-scale questionnaire with 50 items was applied to determine trends in those teachers’ epistemological views on science. The results showed that teachers’ views are mostly correlated with the philosophical period of Logical Positivism/Received View, and to some extent to the period of Recent and Contemporary Accounts. Regarding the classical epistemological topics of correspondence, methodologies, intervention, evolution and representation, teachers’ views could be related to the period of Logical Positivism/Received View and Critical Rationalism, but also to the New Philosophy of Science. The main conclusion of this study is that teachers’ expressed views on NOS are epistemologically eclectic to a much smaller degree when examined with more detail concerning specific periods and topics of the philosophy of science.