Unpacking the Status and Place of "Nature of Science" in the Pre-K–12 Science Curriculum

• In Event: Whose Science? Interrogating the Foundations of "Nature of Science," Uncovering Epistemic Injustices in Science Education

Abstract

Objectives
In the 1980s, scholars began to publish highly cited and influential research about the Nature of Science (NOS). Such research thrived by promoting NOS as a crucial feature of scientific literacy (Dagher & Erduran, 2016; Rudolph, 2000). Thus, NOS became an international fixture in curricula standards and policy documents (Erduran & Dagher, 2014).

Perspective(s)
This paper emerged from a concern about NOS research – that the construct might perpetuate inequities in terms of what counts as science. To examine NOS research, we used the philosophical construct of epistemic injustice. Introduced by Miranda Fricker in 2007, epistemic injustice involves inequitable treatment that relates to issues of knowledge production practices, (mis)communication, (mis)information, and truth (Dotson, 2012; Fricker, 2007). For this paper, epistemic injustice helped us interrogate NOS by asking: How and why do researchers claim that NOS is an important construct to be taught in schools?

Methods
Using keywords “Nature of Science” and “NOS”, we searched for journal articles focused on the nature of science in three scholarly databases: Scopus, Web of Science, and Mendeley. We cross-referenced the results from the searches and created a corpus that included the most-cited 92 articles and chapters that focused on NOS across the three platforms, which we took to represent the most influential work within the field. We looked for the authors’ claims about why NOS was important. Using the lens of epistemic injustice, we created coding categories that helped us examine how and NOS was used by researchers to position the importance of the construct in relation to students and teachers in classrooms.

Results and Discussion
Analysis shows that NOS is claimed to be important for four reasons:
· A goal for science instruction is to help students develop “adequate understanding of the nature of science” (e.g., Lederman, 1992).
· NOS is a key part of scientific literacy, and that understanding universal features of science knowledge production enables students to become informed citizens.
· NOS is a foundational component of science.
· NOS-aligned instruction prepares students to participate in scientific inquiry.
Importantly, while NOS scholars note that debates about ontologies and epistemologies of science occur, they claim that debates about the nature of science are “irrelevant” to K-12 (e.g., Lederman, 1992).
From an epistemic injustice perspective, we notice two arguments made by NOS scholars that might perpetuate inequities. First, denying students opportunities to understand and participate in debates about “what counts” as science presents a false image of science to students. Second, in order to be considered scientifically literate, students and teachers must align with NOS perspective about science. However, considering someone “literate” when purposefully denying access to conversations and knowledge is unjust.

Significance
Scholarship suggests that if a person does not see possess an adequate understanding of NOS, then they will not be scientifically literate. However, by presenting a false version of science to students, NOS scholarship perpetuates epistemic injustice by limiting knowledge about science that students encounter.

Author

• David Stroupe, University of Utah