An historical perspective approach: Development of 7th grade students? views about nature of science

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of historical perspective approaches on 7th grade students? views about nature of science. Structure of atomic units was presented an Historical perspective with emphasis on six target aspects of nature of science. The sample for this study consisted of 56 students from middle school in Turkey. These students were divided into two groups (A and B) based on differentiating their academic achievements of elementary school. Group A has high academic achievement students consisted of 29 students (15 male; 14 female). Group B has low academic achievement students groups consisted of 27 students (16 male; 11 female).The Views of Nature of Science (VNOS) questionnaire (Lederman, Abd-El-Khalick, Bell and Scharwartz, 2002) was used to determine students? initial views of NOS, and was administered again at the end of units as pre?post tests to determine changes in students? views. To help uncover the participants? views, semi-structured interview was undertaken with 6 students as pre and post tests before and end of the intervention.The data by categorizing each participants? views of the seven emphasized aspects of NOS into naive, uncategorized and informed. Chi-square test was used to investigate the possible variations between the pre-test and post-test. T statistical test analysis was also used to compare two groups of views about NOS .The results of the current study clearly revealed that historical perspectives approach significantly shifts have occurred in participants? views of NOS. It was found that low academic achievement students groups? are more informed views about imagination and creativity than the high academic achievement students groups?. Since there are significantly differencies between two groups academic achievement, this is surprising results.Key words: Historical perspective, nature of science, elementary science education