TheNatureOfScience科学本质英文论文.docVIP

Kalev Uiga 10.01.07 The Nature Of Science The Nature of Science (NOS) and it’s importance in modern science has been often discussed by different scientists and philosophers. Usually, the science is called as a process for producing knowledge. The scientific knowledge is created from human imaginations and logical reasoning and it is an important part of the NOS. This scientific knowledge may be tentative (subject to change), empirical (based on and/or derived from observations of the natural world), theory-laden (partly the product of human inference, imagination, and creativity) and socially or culturally embedded [1]. The objective of helping pre-college students develop informed views of NOS has been a central goal for science education during the past 85 years [1]. Research studies have found that the high-school students understanding about the NOS plays an important role in science education as a whole. However, these studies have shown that the student’s understanding of the NOS is quite poor [2]. This problem may be caused by different factors. For example, the overemphasis on quantitative calculations in most science textbooks causes the student’s low-level conceptual understanding and problem-solving ability. The author’s suggests that the students should at least be able to explore basic qualitative understanding before they are engaged in quantitative calculation [2]. From an educational perspective, most agree that teaching children to simply recall scientific acts, laws, and theories is not enough [3]. When the students relate their basic theoretical knowledge with practical laboratory experiments, then this will hopefully aid to improve and develop student’s understanding about the NOS [4]. So it’s obvious that clearly more is needed to support the science education in high-school. The teaching methods are also important by developing the NOS, because it also influences the quality of teaching. For example, it is important to