Teaching the Nature of Science in the Nature: A Summer Science Camp

Abstract

Teaching the nature of science has been one of the main goals of science education in recent years. In order to teach the nature of science in a way that would be appealing to children, a summer science camp was organized in this study. The science camp was held in an area, which was located near a beautiful lake by a mountain. 34 students who were in grades 6 to 8 participated in the camp. The first three days of the camp program were aimed at developing background for inquiry and collaboration skills. Later, the students conducted guided-inquiry on a research question that they asked about nature in small groups for two-days. Each group prepared a poster and presented it to their families on the last day of the camp. A few explicit Nature of Science (NOS) activities were carried out throughout the camp program. Views of Nature of Science questionnaire version D (VNOS D) (Lederman & Khishfe, 2002) was applied as pre- and post-test in order to determine the effectiveness of the camp in introducing NOS. The results showed that the camp program helped the students develop informed views of empirical and tentative nature of NOS. On the other hand, the camp program was less effective in developing informed views of imaginative and creative nature of science and least effective in introducing theory ladeness of scientific knowledge, scientific models and difference between observation and inference.