Abstract:

This paper reports the results of a study that compared South Africa Grade 11 learners (n=10) and third year B.Ed. Pre-service teachers’ (n=10) understandings of Nature of Science (NOS) as part of their Physical Science subject matter knowledge. Data on the learners’ and pre-service teachers’ NOS understandings was quantitatively and qualitatively collected using a Likert type questionnaire and interviews respectively. Quantitative analysis of the data is done using the Mann-Whitney U test and graphical comparison of median scores of Likert questionnaire items to ascertain differences in NOS understandings between the Grade 11 learners and the B.Ed. Pre-service teachers. A combination of typological and interpretative analysis of interview transcripts is done to determine differences in NOS understandings between learners and Pre-service teachers.The analyses reveal that overall, the Learners and B.Ed. Pre-service teachers’ understandings of NOS are not very different from each other. It is recommended that if the goal of science education for scientific literacy is to be achieved, initial teacher education training should do more to explicitly develop pre-service teachers’ subject matter knowledge understandings, pedagogical skills and valuing of NOS, that is, their pedagogical content knowledge for nature of science. Explicit testing of learners’ NOS understandings is suggested as a way of improving the school Physical Science curriculum.

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