NOS: Integrating the Nature of Science throughout the Entire School Year

Secondary school students possess many significant misconceptions regarding the nature of science (NOS). Accurately portraying the NOS throughout the school year is necessary for promoting desired conceptual change. However, few teachers devote more than an isolated unit to the NOS, and rarely explicitly raise NOS issues while teaching science content during the rest of the year. This practice is problematic considering the implicit inaccurate NOS messages generally present within the science classroom. This paper discusses how to explicitly integrate accurate NOS instruction through the entire school year, and provides examples illustrating how to do so. This article promotes National Science Education Content Standards A, E, and G, and Iowa Teaching Standards 3, 4, and 5