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Nature of Science and Nature of Scientists Implications for University Education in the Natural Sciences Ashwin Mohan 1

& Gregory J. Kelly

1

Published online: 16 September 2020 # Springer Nature B.V. 2020

Abstract

The past decade has seen multiple debates and discussions over the appropriate framing of Nature of Science (NOS) for science education. These debates have stemmed from a diversity of philosophical views on what science fundamentally is. In post-secondary STEM education, the goals of a science education rest in having students socialize into scientific STEM communities by engaging in research. In this paper, we highlight how NOS is taken up by individuals within scientific communities, drawing on historical and concurrent examples of STEM communities. Terming this the Nature of Scientist (NOSist), we argue that a post-secondary NOS education must take into account how the individual’s participation within a community of practice is predicated on the possession of a different set of epistemic aims, values, and practices than what is typically characterized within NOS frameworks. The switch in analytical lens from the collective as a whole to the individual within a collective contributes to an understanding of how scientists function within scientific communities. We conclude with recommendations and a call for further studies to characterize how individual scientists negotiate practice within the dialectic of the scientific communities that they are members of.

1 Approach (The) Nature of Science (NOS) has been a contentious topic of debate over many decades since seminal work in science studies in the 1970s and 1980s, which highlighted the inherently social nature of scientific work. Over the years, understanding about the enterprise of science has evolved from a Mertonian series of norms (Merton 1942) to descriptions that encapsulate the conceptual, epistemic, and social goals of science education (Duschl 2008). The history of concerns surrounding the “public understanding” of science can be traced back even further, to early years of the nineteenth century in the UK (Hodson 2014). Typically, in the scholarship of science education, the debates have concerned themselves with the epistemology of science, science as a way of knowing or the values and beliefs inherent to scientific knowledge, and its * Ashwin Mohan [email protected]

1

The Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA, USA

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A. Mohan, G. J. Kelly

development (Lederman 2007). The discussions have spawned multiple models of Nature of Science and multiple forms of assessing students’ “knowledge” of NOS. This diversity can be seen to stem from disagreements within the community along multiple lines, including the existence of a single NOS or multiple Natures of Science (see Kelly 2008 for a discussion), resulting from a blurring of the boundaries between science and technology and between the different sciences themselves, leading to multiple disciplinary epistemic frameworks and different conceptualizations of epistemic pra