Author ORCID Identifier
Date Available
5-3-2024
Year of Publication
2024
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Document Type
Doctoral Dissertation
College
Education
Department/School/Program
STEM Education
First Advisor
Dr. Sahar Alahem
Second Advisor
Dr. Jennifer Wilhelm
Abstract
Over the past several decades, science education reforms have called for students to develop appropriate views of the nature of science and have a comprehensive understanding of subject matter. Additionally, education research has demonstrated that teachers must have appropriate views of the nature of science and strong content knowledge as necessary conditions for appropriate instruction on the nature of science. However, research has consistently shown that teachers hold naïve or inadequate views of the nature of science. This is problematic as teachers are tasked with teaching science to students that is aligned with current education standards. Therefore, teachers need to have, in part, appropriate views of the nature of science if they are going to teach on the nature of science.
One area of research that has shown promising results at improving teachers’ views of the nature of science is the use of explicit-reflective instruction contextualized within a socioscientific issue. The use of socioscientific issues provides opportunities to incorporate the nature of science into topics with moral and ethical concerns. For example, the COVID-19 pandemic has emerged as a unique socioscientific issue that has exhibited many aspects of the nature of science. Therefore, the COVID-19 pandemic has provided an opportunity to contextualize the nature of science within a socioscientific issue. Additionally, there is a deficit in the literature concerning teachers’ beliefs and understanding about COVID-19, which makes it difficult to ascertain teachers’ knowledge about COVID-19.
Therefore, the purpose of this multiple case study was to investigate teachers’ beliefs and understanding about viruses and COVID-19 and their views of the nature of science before and after the implementation of a series of activities with COVID-19 as the anchoring socioscientific phenomenon. As part of a National Institutes of Health funded project on COVID-19 wastewater surveillance, a novel STEM unit was developed and used for the current study. Aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards, the novel STEM unit is a phenomenon-based unit comprised of six lessons with COVID-19 as the anchoring socioscientific phenomenon. The unit was designed to address topics related to viruses, wastewater testing, water quality, and environmental health.
Three science teachers from a rural high school in the southeastern United States participated in the study. The intervention included a professional development workshop and the implementation of the novel STEM unit. The professional development workshop was designed to explicitly convey notions of the nature of science by having teachers engage in nature of science activities. The novel STEM unit was co-taught by the teacher participant and the researcher. Instruction took place over 12 school days for each teacher participant during their regular science classes. Data were collected from a teacher semi-structured interview, teacher survey, and teacher content questionnaire. Data were collected before the professional development workshop and after the implementation of the STEM unit.
The findings from the current study demonstrated that all three teacher participants had improvements in their content knowledge about viruses. Additionally, the teacher participants showed changes in their beliefs and understanding about COVID-19 (e.g., the frequency in which teacher participants used different sources to obtain information about COVID-19). Moreover, all three teacher participants showed more developed views of the nature of science. However, one teacher participant showed both more developed and less developed views of the nature of science. Together, these findings provided insight into teacher participants’ beliefs and understanding about viruses and COVID-19 and their views of the nature of science before and after the implementation of a series of activities with COVID-19 as the socioscientific issue.
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.13023/etd.2024.100
Funding Information
Funded by NIH RADx-rad Initiative grant U01 DA053903-01.
Recommended Citation
Chalfant, Jeffrey, "EXPLORING TEACHERS’ VIEWS OF THE NATURE OF SCIENCE AND THEIR BELIEFS AND UNDERSTANDING ABOUT VIRUSES AND COVID-19: A MULTIPLE CASE STUDY OF THREE SECONDARY SCIENCE TEACHERS AT A RURAL HIGH SCHOOL IN THE SOUTHEASTERN UNITED STATES" (2024). Theses and Dissertations--Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Education. 19.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/stem_etds/19
