University students’ understanding of the nature of science

Abstract

This study is formed by Reconceptualized Family Resemblance Approach to Nature of Science (RFN) as reconceptualized notion of nature of science (NOS) from a “Family Resemblance Approach” (Erduran & Dagher, 2014; Kaya & Erduran, 2016b). This study aims to investigate undergraduate university students’, who are from faculty of education, arts and sciences and engineering, understandings of NOS within the scope RFN framework, determine the differences in students’ understanding of five different RFN categories by taking their faculties and majors into consideration and suggest effective curricular strategies to improve university students’ understanding of NOS. A total of 637 third and fourth grade university students from 3 different faculties and 12 different majors participated in the study. A 70-item “NOS Questionnaire’’ which is reflected five different categories of RFN and interview questions which are supported by two science related texts were used as data sources of the study. Quantitative data analysis results indicate that there is a statistically significant difference between university students’ understanding of NOS in terms of their majors, which are science and non-science. Qualitative data analysis results also show that while the university students from non-science majors have a broader and comprehensive perception of epistemic, cognitive and socialinstitutional categories of NOS; science major students have a lower level and superficial perception of different categories of NOS.