Reconceptualizing the Nature of Science for Science Education

Prompted by the ongoing debate among science educators over ‘nature of science’, and its importance in school and university curricula, this book is a clarion call for a broad re-conceptualizing of nature of science in science education. The authors draw on the ‘family resemblance’ approach popularized by Wittgenstein, defining science as a cognitive-epistemic and social-institutional system whose heterogeneous characteristics and influences should be more thoroughly reflected in science education. They seek wherever possible to clarify their developing thesis with visual tools that illustrate how their ideas can be practically applied in science education.
The volume’s holistic representation of science, which includes the aims and values, knowledge, practices, techniques, and methodological rules (as well as science’s social and institutional contexts), mirrors its core aim to synthesize perspectives from the fields of philosophy of science and science education. The authorsbelieve that this more integrated conception of nature of science in science education is both innovative and beneficial. They discuss in detail the implications for curriculum content, pedagogy, and learning outcomes, deploy numerous real-life examples, and detail the links between their ideas and curriculum policy more generally.

• Domain-specificity in scientific inquiry
• Epistemic practices of science
• Family Resemblance Approach
• Generative images of science
• Heidegger family resemblance
• NOS
• Nature of science
• Philosophy of science
• Science studies
• Scientific knowledge
• Scientific practices
• science education
• science learning
• learning and instruction

“This 8-chapter, 190-page, extensively documented Reconceptualizing book is a welcome addition to the field of Nature of Science (NOS) research in science education. … The authors of Reconceptualizing provide rich, detailed and practical evaluation of research literature across the whole NOS spectrum, and well work out their own elaboration of the FRA … . In summary, an excellent and richly documented book that will progress NOS research in science education.” (Michael R. Matthews, Studies in Science Education, Vol. 53 (1), November, 2017)

“Teacher educators would find the book useful, both for introducing theoretical aspects of NOS in their courses and for the cases and examples included in it. In particular, the generative images have potential to be worthwhile tools in weaving NOS in science education.” (María Pilar Jiménez-Aleixandre, Science and Education,Vol. 24, 2015)

• Department of Education and Professional Studies, University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland

  Sibel Erduran

• School of Education, University of Delaware, Newark, USA

  Zoubeida R. Dagher

Policies and ethics