Perspectives for Teaching About How Science Works

Abstract

An integrative, perspective-directed, and practical approach to teaching the nature of science is elaborated in this contribution. The approach is integrative in the sense that students reflect on general and domain-specific aspects of knowledge development. In order to do this, students contribute to knowledge development using domain-specific perspectives that guide them in formulating questions as well as answers and criteria to assess those answers. The approach is practical in the sense that three heuristics were developed that offer teachers practical design support for redesigning their regular lessons into integrative, perspective-based lessons.