A study on the understanding about nature of scientific knowledge and attitude toward scientific inquiry of pre-service science teacher through open inquiry

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate the understanding of nature of scientific knowledge and attitudes toward scientific inquiry of pre-service science teachers experienced open inquiry. The study was conducted in 10 sessions of open inquiry-based chemistry experiment. The subjects were 40 pre-service science teachers recruited from the experiment class. They received pre-test, mid-test, post-test on understanding nature of scientific knowledge and attitudes toward scientific inquiry of open inquiry activities. 20 pre-service science teachers among them participated in the interview. The results of this study are as follows. First, there was a significant difference in pre-service science teachers’ understanding of the nature of the scientific knowledge (p<.05). In particular, understanding of creativity and sociality parts improved gradually. Second, pre-service science teachers’ attitude toward scientific inquiry had changed negatively until the middle of the semester, and then changed positively later. The post-test score was significantly higher than the mid-test score (p<.05).