Harnessing indigenous scientific discovery in medicinal chemistry to promote selected nature of science attributes among Chinese high school students: case of Artemisinin
Dongsheng
Wan
a and
R.
Subramaniam
*b
aSchool of Education, Soochow University, Jiangsu, China
bNational Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. E-mail: rsubramaniam358@gmail.com
First published on 1st June 2023
Abstract
Though there are a multiplicity of approaches that have been used to promote Nature of Science (NOS) among school students, an approach based on exploration of a scientific discovery indigenous to the sample population, of contemporary interest, and based on a topic outside the school science syllabus seems to be lacking in the literature. This study focused on Chinese high school students (N = 98), using the discovery of an anti-malarial drug by a recent Nobel Prize winning Chinese scientist as a focus. A popular science article on this discovery formed the basis for the intervention, and a mainly qualitative approach was used. Variants of an explicit-reflective approach were used for the three groups formed by random sampling for the intervention. The four NOS attributes targeted were: socio-cultural, empirical nature, scientific method, and creativity/imagination, and these were explicitly interrogated through four open-ended questions, respectively. Responses to these questions were parked into five rating levels, which helped to explicate the extent to which the samples were able to provide descriptors to characterize their understandings. The approach based on reading of the article followed by student discussions and mediation by the instructor showed, overall, more gains in NOS as compared to just (1) reading/re-reading of the article and reflecting on it, and (2) reading of the article followed by small sub-group discussions and reflecting on it. It is suggested that there is a case for using indigenous scientific discovery as an approach to foster interest in NOS among students. Some implications of the study are discussed.
Introduction
Chemistry as a discipline
Chemistry is an important discipline in the natural sciences. As a subject, it is taught in schools and tertiary institutions. Its impact on many fields, especially medicine, oil & gas industry, pharmaceuticals, and specialty chemicals (for example, paints and cosmetics) is well known. Medicines are basically chemical in origin and are synthesized in laboratories or industrially. For our study, we focused on Artemisinin, a chemical (drug) used for the treatment of malaria. Its structure is shown in Fig. 1. It is a newly discovered drug, and the scientist who came up with it won the Nobel Prize in medicine/physiology recently. | ||
| Fig. 1 Chemical structure of artemisinin (Source: Wikipedia). | ||
Medicinal/pharmaceutical chemistry and chemistry education
Medicinal/pharmaceutical chemistry as a subject has been the focus of a number of studies in the chemistry education literature, including in this journal – for example, Veale et al. (2018) exposed pharmaceutical chemistry students to drug discovery using a mix of problem-based learning and team learning; Gupte et al. (2021) used writing-to-learn assignments involving medicinal products like Levothyroxine, beta carotene and thalidomide to provide positive learning experiences for undergraduates; Nielsen et al. (2017) focused on how pharmaceutical students use blended media to create explanations; and Wijtmans et al. (2021) focused on exposing science undergraduates to NOS using drug discovery through hands-on experiments.Nature of science
As an important aspect of scientific literacy, understanding the nature of science (NOS) has become a focus of science education in several countries (Hodson, 2014). Despite the consensus on the importance of NOS for scientific literacy, many studies consistently indicate that most students do not possess an adequate understanding of NOS (e.g., Deng et al., 2011; Lederman and Lederman, 2014).Over nearly two decades, Chinese students displayed a high degree of success when it comes to assessment of learning and are also high performers in large-scale international achievement tests such as Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). However, they had lower scores on the aspect related to NOS views when compared with students in the US and England (Zhang et al., 2017).
Major educational reforms are being advanced in Mainland China, and a new curriculum was released in 2022 (MOE, 2022). NOS has been mentioned in science curriculum documents in relation to scientific literacy for the past 20 years. Chinese science-based curricula emphasize a shift from knowledge to scientific literacy (Wei and Thomas, 2005), and some aspects of NOS are explicitly or implicitly represented in science textbooks (Zhuang et al., 2021). NOS is emphasized in official curriculum documents, though senior high schools adopt a separate science curriculum (MOE, 2017).
A few studies (Slay, 2000; Liu and Lederman, 2007; Ma, 2009; Lin et al., 2013; Deng et al., 2014; Wan et al., 2018) found that non-Western learners, including Chinese pre-service teachers, usually hold several alternative views of NOS and have difficulties in understanding NOS owing to different social and cultural backgrounds as compared to students from Western countries. Teachers from non-Western countries regard the lack of suitable teaching resources as a major difficulty when using the historical approach (Höttecke and Silva, 2012; Höttecke et al., 2012) to teach NOS because the development of classical science arose in the West. Some teaching contexts and resources from Western countries may not be transferable for NOS teaching in non-Western countries (Mutegi, 2011; Wan et al., 2018). Consequently, it is necessary to develop and use culturally relevant teaching resources as one way to support non-Western students’ learning (Abrams et al., 2013).
For non-Western students, it would be desirable to design indigenous science episodes, including their own scientists’ discoveries, as this can help them to acquire more interest in science learning as well as understanding NOS (Kiang and Szeto, 2021).
In recent years, contemporary science cases have been developed to teach NOS as an important resource and context – for example, in the context of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) epidemic (Wong et al., 2008). Thus, looking for local and indigenous contemporary science cases as teaching resources or situations for NOS can help to lower cultural barriers in this regard. While the term ‘indigenous science’ has been conceptualized quite differently by various researchers (Abrams et al., 2013), for the purpose of our study, we treat it as knowledge produced by local scientists who leverage traditional knowledge systems in conjunction with the approaches of modern science. However, contemporary science cases or discoveries from non-Western countries as a context or resource for teaching about NOS are rather scarce in the international science education literature.
Pursuant to the foregoing, this study focused on using narratives from a Chinese scientific discovery – the anti-malarial drug, artemisinin, which was inspired by the culture of Traditional Chinese Medicine, as a teaching context for exploring NOS among Chinese students. Examining narratives of Chinese contemporary science cases can enlighten Chinese students to reflect on and discuss about some aspects of NOS in a contextualized manner. This can be of value in teaching NOS and improving scientific literacy among students. However, its potential for NOS teaching needs to be assessed.
Theoretical frameworks
NOS is a complex construct that draws on multi-dimensional aspects of the scientific tradition. As a result, its accurate portrayal remains a challenge. Nevertheless, from a science education perspective, the works of Lederman (1999) and Abd-El-Khalick (2001) provide useful pointers on ways to characterize it so that there is also a basis for comparing various studies in the literature.Notably, there are eight key attributes in relation to NOS. First is the tentativeness of scientific knowledge – that means as scientists’ understanding of a phenomenon increases, it is accompanied by a more accurate portrayal of the state of understanding of that phenomenon. Second is the empirical basis for scientific knowledge – that is, science demands evidence for a claim, and often this comes from experimental investigations. Third is the observation and inference aspect – while observation refers to information and data which can be collected by the senses and, where necessary, augmented by technology, inference is what we make out of this information and data. For example, in the case of a pinhole camera, observation is that the image is inverted while inference is that light travels in a straight line. Fourth is scientific methods – what this says is that there is no singular method to generate scientific knowledge, and scientists use a multiplicity of approaches and experiments to investigate scientific problems. Fifth is the aspect related to creativity and imagination – that is, generation of scientific knowledge does not depend on a standard template which even laypersons can use to create knowledge; rather creativity and imagination are critical factors in the process of knowledge creation, and this can occur anywhere along the value chain of the scientific process. Sixth is the operation of theories and laws in the scientific realm – laws have some sense of finality in that they can be used to explain patterns or relationships in the natural world, often mathematically, and consistently, whereas theories provide explanatory ballast for natural phenomena; there is, however, no hierarchy between laws and theories. Seventh is the chasm between objectivity and subjectivity – scientists are generally skeptical of claims made, and use modes such as peer review and repeat experimentation by others to verify the authenticity of claims; at the same time, there is also a subjective element in their pursuits that cannot be explained rationally – for example, they may pursue a line of research according to intuition and personal inclination. Eighth is the social and cultural underpinnings of scientific knowledge – what scientists investigate also depends on the societal and cultural norms of the times; for example, during a pandemic, clinical researchers may be required by governments to work on finding a vaccine or medicine; likewise, governments may require them to work on defense and other matters. These aspects are not exhaustive but provide a useful framework for research on NOS studies and a basis for situating new findings in the literature.
It has to be emphasized that even though there are some critiques (Irzik and Nola, 2011; Matthews, 2012) on the proposed NOS formulation, it is generally a common approach used by several researchers, and so we will be using selected aspects of these: empirical, scientific method, socio-cultural, and creativity/imagination.
Our study uses variants of the explicit-reflective approach (Akerson et al., 2000) to explore changes in NOS understandings of students – explicit in the sense that NOS attributes of interest are openly allowed to emerge. The roots of this approach can be traced to the tenets of constructivism and conceptual change. Constructivism posits that students build their own understanding in light of elements of previous knowledge (Ausubel, 1960). In relation to NOS, the students in this study have not been formally instructed on NOS (as informed by the school) but as senior high school science students, they would have some knowledge of the scientific tradition, which can come in useful as they try to make sense of new ideas they are about to learn. In other words, whatever existing knowledge of NOS they may have forms the substratum on which the incoming information needs to be made sense of, internalized to the extent possible and incorporated as part of their knowledge structure. Also, social constructivism (Kragh, 1998) is another framework used in our study – learning can occur more effectively in interactive settings because the discourse which arises can help students navigate understandings more effectively. Conceptual change refers to the process where students’ alternative conceptions (ACs) undergo remediation so that these conform more to their canonical equivalents (Posner et al., 1982). This change can be challenging to effect as the literature shows that some ACs, depending on the topic, can be rather tenacious (Taber, 2008) and not easy to change. In the present study, the challenge is to see how students’ pre-existing conceptions of NOS can be transformed so that these are more aligned with contemporary understandings.
Literature review
What to teach about NOS
Although the importance of NOS is widely agreed by science educators, there are also controversies about what science really is among philosophers of science (Allchin, 2011). It is difficult to find a commonly accepted definition of NOS in these fields because the enterprise of science is multifaceted and dynamic, and changes following the increasing recognition of the history, sociology and philosophy of science (Erduran and Dagher, 2014). Some researchers (e.g., Irzik and Nola, 2011; Clough, 2011; Matthews, 2012) criticized the simplification of NOS as hindering students from experimenting and understanding the diversity of scientific enterprise because each scientific discipline has its own specific features. That is why more holistic NOS views need to be adopted (Allchin, 2011). That is to say, the multifaceted views of NOS should be taught in the science curriculum in order to give students a holistic picture of science (Allchin, 2011). Moreover, Irzik and Nola (2014) used the idea of ‘family resemblance’ to depict and characterize NOS. This approach defines science as ‘a cognitive-epistemic system’ and ‘a social-institutional system’ (Erduran and Dagher, 2014), and shows similarities and differences shared among the different sciences as well as “provides a comprehensive representation of different aspects that characterize the scientific enterprise” (Yeh et al., 2019, p. 294).The foregoing perspectives offer scope for different approaches for teaching NOS and frame science curriculum design. Beyond this controversy or discussion, though there is little consensus on a definition of NOS, it does not mean that educators need not define content of NOS teaching in the science curricula. It would be helpful if some specific benchmarks about NOS can be demonstrated in the school science curricula for NOS teaching. With respect to the NOS content to be taught in the science curriculum, broad agreement has been achieved on some aspects, including areas of scientific knowledge, scientific inquiry, how scientists work as a social group, and so on (Lederman et al., 2002; Osborne et al., 2003; Deng et al., 2011; Abd-El-Khalick, 2012; Dagher and Erduran, 2016; Kampourakis, 2016).
How to teach NOS
Some researchers (e.g., Allchin et al., 2014; Cofré et al., 2019) not only pay attention to the content of NOS teaching but also focus on selecting approaches to improve students' understanding of NOS and creating contexts for teaching NOS. There are two common approaches for teaching NOS: explicit and implicit. The explicit approach refers to teaching NOS directly through open discussions so as to reflect on some aspects of NOS. The implicit approach allows students to experience NOS through activities such as scientific inquiry and experiments, instead of discussing and reflecting on NOS directly. A widely cited review demonstrated that explicit teaching of NOS with reflection is more effective than implicit teaching through lab inquiry activities (Abd-El-Khalick and Lederman, 2000; Bell et al., 2011; Pavez et al., 2016). To be effective in explicit teaching of NOS, teachers also need to provide students with contexts, rather than requiring them to memorize NOS attributes. The effectiveness of NOS teaching has been examined in several contexts: (a) contemporary science cases, including socio-scientific issues (e.g., Khishfe, 2014); (b) history of science (e.g., Kim and Irving, 2009; Williams and Rudge, 2016); (c) and inquiry accompanied by tasks of reflection on the processes carried out (e.g., Khishfe, 2008), which were also highlighted by García-Carmona and Acevedo-Díaz (2016). Due to the merits and deficits of each context, integrating these contexts through contextualization has been suggested. Some examples of NOS teaching in different contexts have been developed in recent years (Allchin et al., 2014), such as pairing history with contemporary cases (Kolstø, 2008). A number of studies (e.g., Akerson et al., 2000; Sandoval, 2005; Williams and Rudge, 2016; García-Carmona and Acevedo-Díaz, 2017) have shown that effectiveness can be achieved by a contextualized, reflective and explicit approach to NOS teaching based on contemporary and historical cases (Cofré et al., 2019; McComas et al., 2020). Therefore, we will use the explicit and reflective approach to explore NOS views of Chinese high school students through an authentic case that has both contemporary and historical features.Teaching NOS through contemporary cases from local scientists
Science educators have reached a certain degree of consensus in recent years that science education needs to consider culture-related aspects in NOS teaching (e.g., Mutegi, 2011; Kiang and Szeto, 2021). Some researchers (e.g., Mutegi, 2011; Wan et al., 2018; Kiang and Szeto, 2021; Shi, 2021) reported that the prevailing teaching approaches in science education are not likely to meet the social needs of students from non-Western countries; also, the core, when it comes to the future of science education, is in understanding, supporting and using different cultures as learning resources rather than hurdles, with a view to expanding human awareness and values. Consensus on the value of the history of science has been reached to a good extent, and there are many investigations in teaching (e.g., Rudge et al., 2014; Williams and Rudge, 2016) but largely limited to the Western history of science (Walls, 2012). This may be due to the fact that modern science originated in the West, and histories of science in non-Western countries are less and scattered. In non-Western countries, therefore, some limited historical cases of local ancient scientific and technological practices can be integrated into the science curricula, mainly to teach scientific knowledge or concepts (Horsthemke and Yore, 2014; Ugwu and Diovu, 2016). For example, Ugwu and Diovu (2016) found that there was enhanced interest in students when indigenous knowledge is integrated into chemistry teaching for sustainable living. A relevant study (Aikenhead, 2001), though not in a NOS context, integrated science elements from aboriginal societies with Western science and found the intervention on cross-cultural science teaching effective. It has to be noted that the development of contemporary science has involved scientists from all over the world, including non-Western countries such as China. Due to their familiarity, relevance and immediacy, and feelings for their own countries’ scientists, some contemporary science discoveries or scientific practices from non-Western countries can make abstract science more tangible, through the authenticity and “here” relevance to help motivate their students to discuss “how science works”, including the understanding contexts of culture, politics and economy behind science (Allchin et al., 2014). Therefore, contemporary authentic science cases, especially those of non-Western countries, can possibly be of greater value for teaching NOS in their own countries than Western historical cases of science for teaching NOS to non-Western students because they may better recognize the nature of the contemporary scientific problems and practices existing at that time and at their place as well as have proximity in relating to the socio-cultural, political and economic milieu surrounding the events (Wong et al., 2008; Wong et al., 2009; Allchin et al., 2014; Cofré et al., 2019). For example, Wong, et al. (2008) used the context of the outbreak of SARS in 2003 in Hong Kong as teaching resources to develop student-teachers’ understanding about certain aspects of NOS.Notwithstanding the foregoing, there is a lack of developing and designing histories of science and contemporary cases from non-Western countries as contexts for teaching NOS, and thus promote NOS understanding among their students. For example, in the context of our study, there are very few studies that have explored NOS views of school students in mainland China. One validation study (Deng et al., 2014), using high school students in South China, found that that their NOS views mapped onto some NOS dimensions in the literature and that they generally held a “constructivist/relativist-oriented view”.
In this sense, we opted for the explicit-reflective approach, with NOS contents included in a context about the condensed and well-documented history of the discovery of artemisinin; that is, it is a contemporary case, and also has the characteristics of historical cases (Kolstø, 2008; Allchin et al., 2014) for addressing NOS among Chinese students.
NOS studies in chemistry education
A number of studies in chemistry education have focused on NOS. We review relevant studies here.Lin and Chen (2002) used history as a context to explore the extent of NOS gains among pre-service teachers in Chemistry. It was found that the experimental group showed significant gains in NOS attributes compared to the control group when completing an instrument on NOS. De Berg (2003) noted that undergraduates found it challenging to write responses to open-ended questions on the periodic table related to NOS after reading four relevant references. The long history of the periodic table is especially conducive for teaching NOS from a historical perspective (Peters and Sterling, 2008) to secondary students – especially with the focus on activities relating to classification and exploring linkages among properties of elements, Abd-El-Khalick et al. (2008), in a study of NOS representations in high school chemistry textbooks, noted that generally there is significant deficit in this respect. Another study by Aydin and Tortumlu (2015), this time on Turkish high school chemistry textbooks, noted that with the progression from grade 9 to 12, there is a noticeable diminution in the number of NOS aspects covered. Vesterinen et al. (2013) focused on a study of Nordic upper secondary chemistry textbooks and reported mixed findings. A more recent study focused on high school chemistry textbooks in China and found that compared to the old textbooks, the new textbooks covered selected NOS aspects in more depth (Chen et al., 2022). Wijtmans et al., (2021) focused on providing undergraduate science students opportunities to appreciate NOS through a course on discovery of drugs; the experience was found to be rewarding.
The literature on NOS further indicates the following:
(1) Most NOS interventions take a relatively long time – for example, 10 weeks, with two 50 minute sessions a week (Khishfe and Abd-El-Khalick, 2002); over one semester (Lin and Chen, 2002); and over seven months (Adibelli-Sahin and Deniz, 2017). This may be an issue with schools where curricula time is tight, and learning outcomes take precedence over research interventions. It seems to us that it would be desirable to explore interventions which are of relatively short durations, and yet can produce modest learning gains.
(2) Though there are a number of approaches to promote NOS among school students, an approach that focuses on a scientific discovery indigenous to the sample population and of contemporaneous interest seems to be lacking in the literature. It seems to us that such an approach can pique interest in the samples about the topic.
(3) In relation to the explicit-reflective approach, commonly recommended for NOS interventions, we were interested to explore the efficacy of this approach under three different intervention conditions which have not been or only been minimally explored: student-driven, group-driven and a mix of group-driven and teacher-driven, using a popular science article as the basis; in all three modes, reflections are needed.
(4) Most of the studies in the literature focused on topics related to the school science curricula – for example, topics in the history of school science topics and hands-on inquiry activities as well as argumentation on socio-scientific issues. While this is a useful approach, since students can better relate to the topic being explored or related to the contemporaneousness of an issue, an approach external to the school science curricula seems to be lacking. We argue that this can also contribute to tuning the minds of students towards contemporary scientific developments and thus show that science is a dynamic and living enterprise from an NOS perspective.
(5) Very few studies have leveraged medicinal/pharmaceutical chemistry to promote NOS attributes among students. In fact, we were able to find only one such study.
(6) Specifically with respect to chemistry, very few studies have focused on interventions.
(7) There are scarce, if any, studies that focus on NOS views of school students from mainland China. Such a study can further contribute to the corpus of NOS literature, that has focused more on samples in the Western context.
Based on the foregoing, there are a few gaps that are worth addressing.
We used variants of an explicit-reflective approach (reading of an article on medicinal chemistry followed by reflections, reading of the article followed by small sub-group discussions and reflections; and reading of the article followed by instructor mediation of group discussions and then reflections) to try to foster selected NOS attributes among senior Chinese high school students when focusing on a scientific discovery by a local scientist, as depicted in a popular science article. The two principal research questions for this study are thus:
(1) What views of selected NOS attributes do the students show in the three variants of the explicit-reflective approach mentioned above? More specifically, the four sub-questions are as follows, all with respect to the discovery of Artemisinin:
(a) What do students think about the role of sociocultural contexts in the development of science?
(b) What do students think about scientists recommending that an experiment be repeated and in different situations?
(c) Do students think that scientists adopt diverse scientific methods in their research?
(d) What do students think about the role of creativity and imagination in research?
(2) What is the efficacy of the three variants of the explicit-reflective approach for fostering NOS among students?
Methods
Overview of research design
The study used an experimental-reference group design involving three groups which were distributed from two classes via random draw. Owing to curriculum constraints and the Covid pandemic (including imposition of home learning and restricted access to school samples on site), limited time was given by the school for the intervention. Though the school informed us that the students were not formally exposed to NOS, we wished to have some baseline information for reference. In this context, one of the three groups was randomly designated to just read/re-read the article in question and then reflect on the NOS attributes in the questionnaire. This can provide us with some indication of their NOS understandings with which we can reference the results for the other two groups. Thus, it can be considered as a posttest-only design, but the views of the reference group (Group 1) can be regarded as a form of baseline for comparison and, in a way, approximate proxy for pretest. Here, we must note that any intervention will, in general, promote gains in learning but to varying extents. Thus, the reference group, after the task assigned to them, is likely to show some NOS gains but this is expected to be low. In other words, their prior NOS understanding may be even lower than what has been registered in the intervention they underwent. For the purpose of comparison, their baseline understanding can be a convenient index for comparison of the efficacy of the interventions of the other two groups. For the two experimental groups, reading of the article and small sub-group discussions (3–4 students) were required except that for one of the groups, there was also mediation of the proceedings by the instructor. The three groups completed an instrument focusing on four aspects of NOS after the intervention.A qualitative approach was mainly used for this study. Students need to articulate their understanding of the four questions in writing, thus analysis from a qualitative standpoint is appropriate.
Context and participants
The samples originally comprised 102 students from two classes enrolled in grade 2 of a senior high school in China (age range of 16–17). They were divided into three groups by random draw (Group 1 – reference group, Group 2 – experimental group 1, and Group 3 – experimental group 2). This school is among the top 50% of schools in this region. The students have learned the basic contents of physics, chemistry and biology at the senior high school level, passed the senior school level examination of these science-based courses, and are about to enter their third year of high school for studying science elective modules. They will also choose science-based courses as the subjects for the college entrance examination, usually called gaokao, after finishing their third year of learning.Within each experimental group, students were organized into small sub-groups, again by random draw, and every sub-group had 3–4 students. A total of 98 (33 females and 65 males) out of the 102 students completed the intervention activities, with four students not submitting their questionnaires.
Intervention materials
We chose short interventions to facilitate the students’ understanding of NOS under two different experimental conditions, and this was compared with a reference group. The activity involved the reading of an authentic contemporary science case of artemisinin discovery, which won the Chinese scientist a Nobel Prize in Physiology/Medicine in 2015. The four questions explicitly asked students to focus on aspects of NOS inherent in the discovery of the drug in the article.Tu Youyou, the Chinese scientist, led her research team to find a cure for malaria by searching ancient documents and successfully extracting artemisinin from artemisia. The text of the narrative, named as The discovery of artemisinin and Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, was published in Science China: Life Science (Su and Miller. 2015). The English version can be found on this website: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4966551/.
The first author examined a number of articles for use in this study before settling on this article. There were a few reasons for using this article – its pedagogical potential for use in the class is high; a number of NOS attributes can be inferred from the article, and these allow for reflection; and the readability of the article was pitched at a level considered suitable for the samples. Each student was provided with a copy of the article.
We chose to focus on four aspects of NOS (influence on science from politics and social-cultural setting; empirical evidence; diversity of scientific methods; and creativity and imagination) for two reasons: (1) this scientific discovery, made by a Chinese scientist, is only one achievement of Nobel Prize won in the natural sciences from China's political, social and cultural environment. Chinese students are proud of this scientific discovery; and (2) the discovery of artemisinin is not only a contemporary science case but also a history of science in that it contains rich NOS contents, especially the four aspects mentioned earlier, and these aspects have also been emphasized in some science education documents (AAAS, 1993; NRC, 1996; NGSS, 2013). Table 1 summarizes the NOS attributes inherent in the article.
| NOS attribute | Brief details |
|---|---|
| 1. Influence on science from politics, society, economy and culture | In 1967, there was a pandemic of malaria in Vietnam (the influence of social requirements on science research). In response to a request from the Vietnamese government to help them treat malaria, the Chinese government launched a program called Project 523. Professor Tu was appointed as the research director of the project to lead the search for a Chinese herbal medicine with anti-malaria effects (the influence of politics on science). She took inspiration from Chinese medicine, and looked for effective ingredients in Chinese herbs to treat malaria (the influence of culture on science). |
| 2. Empirical evidence | Initial attempts were not as effective as expected, so Professor Tu Youyou returned to the ancient texts and continued testing. She found that an extract of Artemisia annua no. 191 had a good inhibitory effect not only on mice and monkey but also on herself. In August 1972, Professor Tu led a clinical trial team to Hainan Island and tested her extracts on 21 patients to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of the extract. Later, her team tested another 9 cases in Beijing and obtained similar results. She reported the results from the clinical trials in a meeting and encouraged other scientists to repeat the test (need to repeat the experiments under different control conditions to examine and confirm its effectiveness). |
| 3. Diversity of scientific methods. | She first extracted crude artemisinin using scientific methods, and then purified artemisinin using different scientific methods, conducted clinical trials and participated in chemical structure determination. For example, she decided to use ether, replacing ethanol, to extract the active ingredients from the plant leaves (scientists do not adopt a single universal scientific method in their research). |
| 4. Creativity and imagination | Professor Tu was reading some recipes written 1700 years ago on how to obtain ‘juice’ from Qinghao (A. annua) plant to treat fever with cold water, rather than the traditional boiling herbs. Tu suddenly realized that high temperatures might be the cause of the unstable antimalarial activity. In addition, an inspiration Tu got from the description from these recipes was that the leaves might be the most active part of the plant, as it is easier to get ‘juice’ from them than from other parts of the plant. She then decided to extract the active ingredient from plant leaves using ether instead of ethanol (creativity and imagination are important and used usually in scientific research). |
This case can provide authentic materials and contexts as well as a good opportunity for students to discuss and reflect how science works without needing any advanced knowledge of biology/chemistry. Besides the four NOS aspects, other aspects such as scientific ethos, and social organizations and interactions (Yeh et al., 2019) are also addressed in the article to a limited extent. However, due to the limited time designated for the intervention and relatively modest teaching objectives, it was difficult to explore all elements of NOS (García-Carmona and Acevedo-Díaz, 2017).
Table 2 shows the instrument that students need to complete after the intervention. The four questions, one for each NOS attribute, were framed after careful reading of the article. In drafting these questions, both authors leveraged their experience in designing these types of questions that probe learners’ understandings of NOS, and also drew on the strategic advice of Clough (2011) about teaching NOS reflectively as well as assessment about views of NOS by García-Carmona and Acevedo-Díaz (2017). The preliminary version of the instrument was sent to three academics with research interest in NOS for validation. They found the instrument to be basically in order but suggested a few minor amendments. Accordingly, the questions were slightly revised.
| Questions | NOS aspects |
|---|---|
| 1 | How do you think the sociocultural, political, economic, etc., contexts of each age can influence the development of science? Explain this for this case of the discovery of artemisinin. |
| 2 | In view of the results of Prof. Tu's experiments on the effectiveness of artemisinin, why do you think some scientists recommend repeating it several more times and in different situations? |
| 3 | According to what you read in the text, do you think scientists adopt a single universal scientific method in their research? Explain |
| 4 | According to what you read in the text, what role do you believe scientists’ (such as Prof. Tu) creativity and imagination have in their research? |
It has to be reiterated that each NOS tenet was interrogated through just one question. The reasons for this are as follows:
(1) The school provided limited time for this study, and so our focus was more on covering the key NOS attributes.
(2) Owing to the nature of the article, only selected NOS attributes could be covered. It was felt that an open-ended question for each NOS attribute would suffice for this exploratory study.
(3) In view of the limited times allocated for the interventions, the learning goals had to be modest (Matthews, 2012) – so just four NOS attributes and, by extension, one question for each attribute.
Q1 focused on the influence on science from politics, society, economy and culture; Q2 focused on empirical evidence; Q3 focused on diversity of scientific methods; and Q4 focused on creativity and imagination.
Intervention design
The intervention was spread over two weeks, with each session lasting about 50 minutes.We used a flexible interpretation of the explicit-reflective approach for the interventions – explicit in the sense that each of the four questions was framed with a particular NOS attribute for students to focus on, and reflective in the sense that reflection by students was needed to explicate their understanding. This is common for all modes of interventions.
Group 1: during the first week, one session was allocated for reading the material. Then, the students were required to read and reflect over the article individually after class. In the second week, the students were given 15 minutes in class to read through the article again before they were allocated one session to complete the instrument in class. That is, two sessions plus 15 minutes were allocated for this group; this is excluding whatever time they spent outside class time on the article.
Group 2: during the first week, one session was allocated for the students to read through the article. After two days, a further two consecutive sessions were allocated for small sub-group discussions in class based on the NOS questions. In the second week, two additional sessions were allocated for them to read and discuss again and reflect in their own small sub-groups. Finally, they completed the instrument in class during the session. A total of six sessions were allocated.
Group 3: during the first week, one session was allocated for the students to read through the material. Another two consecutive sessions in the same week were allocated for the first author to lead them to discuss the first two NOS questions and for them to write down their answers on the instrument. To be specific, after reading the text material and four questions about aspects of NOS, the students discussed and argued their responses in small sub-groups. Then, the first author led the general discussion and argumentation with the auxiliary questions (Table 3) as scaffolding instruction for the whole class to initiate and stimulate them to reflect and discuss further among themselves. In particular, instructor scaffolding was positioned in such a manner that it allowed for the responses of the students to emerge naturally to the extent possible rather than directly telling them about it. The general discussion and argumentation were done for one NOS question at a time for the whole class so that the students can follow up on their own with further discussions within their respective sub-groups. This process was repeated in the second week for the other two NOS questions over three successive sessions. That is, six sessions were allocated for this group which was the same length of time as Group 2.
| NOS element | Questioning |
|---|---|
| Socio-cultural | 1. Many scientific discoveries came about in different countries and under different prevailing conditions. |
| 2. Do you think the same scientific discovery can be replicated by scientists in other countries at about the same time? By way of example, take an example of high energy physics. Do you think a developing country's scientists can come up with discoveries in this area like the scientists in richer countries? | |
| 3. Or do you think that for some research, the sociocultural, political, and economic factors play a role. If so, explain this. | |
| 4. For this research by Prof Tu, how do you think sociocultural, political, and economic factors may have played a role in helping her in the research. | |
| Empirical | 1. So, Prof. Tu has come up with her research on the effectiveness of artemisinin. Should we just accept his discovery? Why or why not. Explain your reasoning. |
| 2. Why not accept her discovery since she is a very famous scientist? To ask students for their responses here. | |
| 3. So, do we just repeat the experiment in exactly the same context as Prof Tu and confirm the effectiveness of artensinin? Why or why not? | |
| Note: this can lead the students to the idea that replicability in one context does not mean that it works in other contexts. So, we need to repeat the experiments under different control conditions to get a better understanding. | |
| Scientific method | 1. Do you think that another scientist trained in laboratory techniques can come up with a similar discovery? Why or why not? Explain your reasoning. |
| 2. Does it mean that there is more than one way to come up with such a discovery? Yes or no? Explain your reasoning. | |
| Note: this can lead them to the idea that there is no universal scientific method. It all depends on how the scientist approaches the problem. That is, there is more than one way to approach a research problem, and the outcome may or may not be identical. If it is the latter, then it says something that the other scientist has not thought about. | |
| Creativity/innovation | 1. The discovery of artemisinin is very remarkable. Do you think any scientist or anyone can come up with such a discovery? Why or why not? |
| 2. So, it would seem that the scientist must have some special qualities that distinguish him of her from others. What do you think these qualities are? | |
| Note: then the teacher can lead them to the ideas of creativity and imagination in the following manner: (a) can ask them to explain what is their understanding of creativity and to give an example. Then ask them where does creativity come into the picture for this research. (b) Can ask them to explain what is their understanding of imagination and to give an example. Then ask them where does imagination come into the picture for this research. | |
Although the time for Group 1 (reference group) was less than that of Groups 2 and 3, we do not see it as affecting the results of comparison because Group 1 was regarded as a kind of reference for the state of NOS understanding of the samples for this study since it was formed by random distribution. This can provide some baseline information about the students’ NOS understandings even though the school mentioned that they were not formally instructed on NOS.
We now elaborate on how the instructor mediated the proceedings for Group 3, using one of the questions as an example. For Q4 in Table 2 about creativity and imagination, the first author used a number of auxiliary questions to scaffold students’ learning and understanding of NOS (Clough, 2006). For example, on the discovery of artemisinin, students were asked “Do you think any scientist or anyone can come up with such a discovery? Yes or no? Please explain your answer.’ Students may mention that it would seem that the scientist must have some special qualities that distinguish him or her from others. Further, students were asked “What do you think these qualities are?” Then the instructor led students to the ideas of creativity and imagination in the following manner: “Explain what is your understanding of creativity and imagination, and give an example”. Students were asked to discuss explicitly where does creativity and imagination come into the picture for this research. Teacher's auxiliary questions are very important for guiding and structuring students’ understanding of NOS because they prompt students’ ideas and challenge their prior views of NOS (Allchin et al., 2014). Detailed auxiliary questions are provided in Table 3.
The language of instruction was Chinese. All responses were translated into English by the first author and checked for fidelity of translation by another academic who is proficient in both Chinese and English. The final version of the responses reported here elicited better than 95% concurrence in relation to translation equivalence.
Data collection
Students completed the NOS questionnaire after the intervention.Owing to the Covid pandemic and school restrictions (including mandating of home learning on some days and restricting access to students), it was not possible to administer a delayed posttest to check for stability or decay of NOS understandings in students.
Data analyses
We used a qualitative approach to analyze students’ conceptions of the target NOS aspects. Data were collected from students’ responses to the instrument. To classify students’ responses, a systematic process and coding framework (García-Carmona and Acevedo-Díaz, 2017) was used. The process of coding entailed examination of the responses of the students for each question, sieving the responses into a few categories that emerge naturally, assigning a label for each category and computing weightage, based on preponderance of the responses in each category. In other words, it is very much a grounded theory approach (Charmaz, 2006; Seoh et al., 2016; Loh and Subramaniam, 2018). Fidelity of the coding is discussed in the final paragraph of this section.The following are illustrations of specific classification criteria and examples of codes.
The initial rubrics for Q1, Q3, Q4 contained 12 indicators from García-Carmona and Acevedo-Díaz (2017). This was then revised to accommodate the reason indicators for the four aspects of NOS in this study based on the narrative of the discovery of artemisinin and a preliminary analysis of the sample responses. Some categories were replaced or revised. For Q2, we drew on some perspectives in teaching NOS (Bell, 2009; Abd-El-Khalick, 2012) as well as perspectives related to the philosophy, sociology, and history of science to design four reason indicators. All 16 indicators were then reviewed by two other researchers. By consensus, the first indicator for Q1 and the fourth indicator for Q3 were replaced, and the two indicators for Q1 and one indicator for Q3 were revised. In addition, two reason indicators were also revised for Q4. The rubrics of the final framework for this study included 16 NOS elements as reason indicators describing possible statements about these four questions (see Table 4; indicators revised or replaced and statements designed in Q2 are in italics).
| Aspect of NOS | Indicators in the rubrics | Examples of responses from the three groups alluding to the indicators |
|---|---|---|
| Q1 – Influence on science from politics, society, economy and culture | #1. Cultural embeddedness of science (e.g., Tu sought a cure for malaria from traditional Chinese medicine). | “…The unique culture of traditional Chinese medicine has helped scientists grasp the essence of things more precisely, giving them the inspiration to collect and collate various anti-malarial formulae.” (G3–26) |
| #2. Political support for the research. | “…The Vietnamese government's request to the Chinese government to help cure malaria led China to launch “Project 523”. In this process, the attitude of the Chinese government is especially critical, because the political support made it possible to carry out research as a push…. Political support is a strong backer on the road of science, which can make the research process more smooth….” (G2–6) | |
| #3. Scientists often work to meet social demands (Wong, et al., 2009), or impact of science on socioeconomic affairs (e.g., importance of scientific research for the resolution of certain human infectious diseases and in turn the recovery of social order). | “Different times lead to different social demands, scientific development direction will change with the change of social demands, China has always been a big country, food become serious problems for many years in our country, this will force to research on this aspect, our country promoted the scientists, led by Yuan Longping, to do hybrid rice research. Artemisinin was discovered and extracted by Tu Youyou in the past, when people were forced to find a cure for malaria.” (G3–19) | |
| #4. Impact of socioeconomic conditions on science. | “ I think economy plays an important role in the development of science. Only with strong economic support can 523 project be carried out correctly and efficiently. Without a good economy, … cannot support artemisinin scientific research…. It can be said that economic and scientific development are mutually promoting” (G1–15) | |
| Q2 – Empirical evidence | #1. Experiments have to be repeated because the results must be universal (i.e., in different control conditions). | “…They have to be repeated and validated several times in different situations, so that the effectiveness of this artemisinin is not contingent on specific conditions…” (G1–7) |
| #2. They have to be repeated because the scientific community must approve the validity of the results. | “Other scientists dare to question his conclusions and repeat the experiments to verify their accuracy and validity. This conclusion should be accepted by people in the research field through repeated experiments…” (G3–14) | |
| #3. Experiments have to be repeated to rule out contingency and to get reliable results. | “…Scientific research is contingent, and repeated experiments can reduce the contingent factor and make the results convincing, that is, to verify the effectiveness of artemisinin… For example, in Oster's small magnetic needle experiment,…” (G2–12) | |
| #4. Science does not trust authority and needs to be repeated. | “For some conclusions, even those put forward by some very authoritative people, we should also have a skeptical attitude and verify their correctness from different aspects and under different circumstances by repeated experiments.” (G3–1) | |
| Q3 – Diversity of scientific methods | #1. There is no one fixed and rigid stepwise procedure and universal scientific method. Science investigations use diverse methods and do not always use the same set of procedures to obtain data. Scientists use a variety of approaches, strategies and tools to make measurements and observations (NGSS, 2013), and also to generate knowledge. | “I think the scientists in their studies do not use a unified science methods. Inspired by an ancient book, she extracted artemisinin in a different way than most scientists, using ether at a low temperature instead of the herbal torture at high temperature, and found that the results were much more effective than before….” (G2–23) |
| #2. How a scientific investigation develops is influenced by the theoretical framework the scientists take as their referent. | “Tu Youyou obtained an effective treatment for malaria by extracting artemisia annua at low temperature from ge Hong's prescription in the Eastern Jin Dynasty. It can be said that Tu Youyou referred to Ge Hong's method and stood on the shoulders of predecessors like Ge Hong to achieve great results through continuous experimental verification.” (G3–18) | |
| #3. How a scientific investigation develops is influenced by the scientists’ personal beliefs, attitudes, and skills, as well as by their creativity and originality. | “…Because every scientist has different ways of thinking and views as well as different ideas on problems, they will adopt different methods to verify the problems they think about and to solve the same problem…” (G1–7) | |
| #4. New technologies affect scientific research. | “In the past, the development of science and technology is not as developed as it is today, and the scientific experiment equipment is not as developed as it is now. The development of technology will affect scientific research.” (G3–18) | |
| Q4 – Creativity and imagination | #1. They formulate innovative research questions or orientation for the progress of science. | “[creativity and imagination] can propose innovative research questions or directions for scientific research. For example, Tu saw artemisia annua frequently appearing in ancient medicine and wondered if there is something useful in it. The research direction was located to the extraction of artemisia annua.” (G3–25) |
| #2. They establish imaginative and original hypotheses. | “Before an experiment is carried out, scientists need to have a certain amount of imagination and creativity to make hypotheses about the experiment in advance, as well as to explain the phenomenon. For example, Tu Youyou guessed that the high-temperature extraction method might have destroyed the active ingredient of artemisinin, which need her imagination and creativity.” (G3–8) | |
| #3. They design ingenious and rigorous experiments or methods of experimental skill. | “…After the antimalarial activity of artemisinin extract was initially poor, she took inspiration from ancient books and creatively extracted it with diethyl ether at low temperatures…, it shows her imagination and creativity.” (G1–15) | |
| #4. They solve problems or interpret the empirical facts by constructing creative models. | “…After successfully extracting artemisinin, then she explored another structure based on artemisinin, and designed dihydroartemisinin with higher water solubility, which to some degree benefited from her imagination and creativity…” (G2–10) | |
We also set five rating levels (0 to 4) in the rubrics design. The lowest level (level 0) corresponded to none of the foregoing indicators or totally naive views of the NOS content in the narratives of the artemisinin discovery. The rank of the responses from students increased in level with the number of indicators included in the responses. For example, level 1 referred to a response that included any one reason indicator in the rubric, with no other three indicators. In turn, level 2 referred to the response containing two indicators. At the highest level (level 4), the responses referred to the most complete responses, with all four reason indicators.
Using the final rubrics, two researchers drew three completed instruments from each of the groups (nine in total), which were independently checked and coded by them. The results showed an overall agreement of 86%, and consensus was formed after the researchers discussed their inconsistent codes. Finally, the two researchers coded all the remaining responses. Semantically equivalent responses were parked under the same reason indicator for a question. Inconsistent codes were again discussed to reach agreement. Typical examples of the 16 indicators are shown in Table 4.
Where students’ responses have been parked in multiple levels, we also sought to harness the affordances of relevant statistical analyses. SPSS Version 29.0 was used for these analyses. This was done by a temp staff under the supervision of one of the authors.
Ethics approval
Permission to conduct the study was obtained from the first author's university. All students provided informed consent through their parents.Results
Table 4 shows sample responses for the four questions in respect of the indicators framed for data analysis. We now discuss the responses for each of the four questions.Comparison of students’ NOS views among the three groups
| NOS aspect | Indicator in rubrics | Group 1 (N = 32) | Group 2 (N = 32) | Group 3 (N = 34) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Note: above entries represent only those coded for NOS understandings. Students providing incorrect or ambiguous responses do not feature in this table. As some entries can be parked in more than one indicator, the number of responses does not add up to the sample size for each group. | ||||
| Q1. Influence on the development of science from politics, society and culture | #1 | 4 (12.5%) | 6 (18.8%) | 25 (73.5%) |
| #2 | 7 (21.9%) | 12(37.5%) | 23 (67.6%) | |
| #3 | 1 (3.1%) | 0 (0%) | 10 (29.4%) | |
| #4 | 8 (25.0%) | 10(31.3%) | 23 (67.6%) | |
| Q2. Empirical evidence | #1 | 5 (15.6%) | 6 (18.8%) | 14 (41.2%) |
| #2 | 0 (0%) | 1 (3.1%) | 2 (5.9%) | |
| #3 | 0 (0%) | 2 (6.3%) | 10 (29.4%) | |
| #4 | 0 (0%) | 0 (0%) | 11 (32.4%) | |
| Q3. Scientific methods | #1 | 2 (6.3%) | 8 (25.0%) | 27 (79.4%) |
| #2 | 0 (0%) | 0 (0%) | 3 (8.8%) | |
| #3 | 3 (9.4%) | 5 (15.6%) | 18 (52.9%) | |
| #4 | 1 (3.1%) | 0 (0%) | 3 (8.8%) | |
| Q4. Creativity and imagination | #1 | 1 (3.1%) | 3 (9.4%) | 9 (26.5%) |
| #2 | 4 (12.5%) | 2 (6.3%) | 22 (64.7%) | |
| #3 | 13 (40.6%) | 10(31.3%) | 27 (79.4%) | |
| #4 | 6 (18.8%) | 7 (21.9%) | 12 (35.3%) | |
Table 5 summarizes students’ views of the four NOS aspects in response to the four questions. Allusions to all the reasons established as referents in the responses of Group 3 to all four questions were found. The proportion of student responses in Group 3 for the 16 reason indicators for the four questions in the rubric was significantly higher than those for Groups 1 and 2. This indicates that there was some overall progress in the understanding of NOS in Group 3 as compared to Groups 1 and 2. However, for Group 2, reading and discussion without the auxiliary questions as scaffolding instruction, was not as effective as desired. For Table 5, the responses of the students can be parked in more than one category – that is, the categories are not mutually exclusive, and so we cannot use chi square statistics for analysis. Other forms of non-parametric statistics such as the Mann–Whitney U test and the Krush–Wallis test are also not appropriate here since they require means/medians, which are not appropriate for the data in the table, which are expressed as frequencies and percentages of response selections. Thus, qualitative interpretation is used here.
Finally, it should be noted that some poorly informed or naive views of NOS appeared in the responses of some students for all three groups. For example, 10 students (4 in Group 1, 4 in Group 2 and 2 in Group 3) mentioned that “clean government and stable society or relaxed social environment can promote the development of science”, and 5 students (3 in Group 1, 2 in Group 2 and 0 in Group 3) thought that “…our ancients have astuteness and resourcefulness, which our scientific research needs to learn directly from…” (only referring to asking modern people to directly copy the practices of the ancients) in Q1 for responses on the “influence on science from politics, society and culture”. For Q2, 13 students (7 in Group 1, 5 in Group 2 and 1 in Group 3) believed in the following: do more experiments, take the mean value/average, and reduce the error. Some students described Tu's approach as “multi-angled, multi-faceted and multi-layered” in Q3, but did not specify how her method was multi-angled, multi-faceted and multi-layered. Some students also said that “the development of scientific research is inseparable from creativity and imagination” but did not mention how scientists use creativity and imagination or explain why scientific research is inseparable from creativity and imagination through specific examples in Q4.
Comparison of levels of students’ views across the three groups
| Level | Frequencies (and %) for aspect of NOS | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Q1 | Q2 | Q3 | Q4 | ||
| Group 1 (N = 32) | 0 | 17(53.1%) | 27(84.4%) | 26(81.3%) | 14(43.8%) |
| 1 | 12(37.5%) | 5(15.6%) | 6(18.8%) | 12(37.5%) | |
| 2 | 1(3.1%) | 0 | 0 | 6(18.8%) | |
| 3 | 2(6.3%) | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| Group 2 (N = 32) | 0 | 12(37.5%) | 23(71.9%) | 20(62.5%) | 16(50.0%) |
| 1 | 12(37.5%) | 9(28.1%) | 11(34.4%) | 10(31.3%) | |
| 2 | 8(25.0%) | 0 | 1(3.1%) | 6(18.8%) | |
| 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
| Group 3 (N = 34) | 0 | 2(5.9%) | 8(23.5%) | 1(2.9%) | 0 |
| 1 | 5(14.7%) | 16(47.1%) | 18(52.9%) | 10(29.4%) | |
| 2 | 8(23.5%) | 9(26.5%) | 13(38.2%) | 15(44.1%) | |
| 3 | 16(47.1%) | 1(2.9%) | 1(2.9%) | 6(17.6%) | |
| 4 | 3(8.8%) | 0 | 1(2.9%) | 3(8.8%) | |
It is notable that, after reading followed by small sub-group discussions under the guidance of the instructor's auxiliary questions, Group 3 had a generally marked increase in the students’ references to the various indicators in the rubric for the four questions as compared to Groups 1 and 2 (Table 6).
For Table 6, it was not possible to use chi square analysis directly on the data, as presented. However, when the relevant levels (0, 1, 2, 3 & 4) were collapsed into a few discrete categories with recoded levels (Level A: 0; Level B: 1; and Level C: 2, 3 & 4), then it was possible to use chi square analysis for three of the questions (Q1, 3 and 4). Table 7 presents this recoding of the data for the four questions for the three groups. It must be noted that in chi square analysis, while the actual count for any of the cells could be zero, the expected count could be more than this, depending on the distribution of data in the cells. For Question 2, it was not possible to do chi square analysis since the expected count for three of the cells was less than 5, which violates one of the assumptions of the chi-square test of independence. So, for this question, we used Fisher's Exact Test of Independence.
| Group | Count | Recoded levels | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | B | C | ||
| Note: observed count obtained from Table 6. Expected count obtained from the SPSS output; it can also be calculated from the distribution of data in the cells. | ||||
| Question 1 | ||||
| 1 | Observed | 17 | 12 | 3 |
| Expected | 10.1 | 9.5 | 12.4 | |
| 2 | Observed | 12 | 12 | 8 |
| Expected | 10.1 | 9.5 | 12.4 | |
| 3 | Observed | 2 | 5 | 27 |
| Expected | 10.8 | 10.1 | 13.2 | |
| Question 2 | ||||
| 1 | Observed | 27 | 5 | 0 |
| Expected | 18.9 | 9.8 | 3.3 | |
| 2 | Observed | 23 | 9 | 0 |
| Expected | 18.9 | 9.8 | 3.3 | |
| 3 | Observed | 8 | 16 | 10 |
| Expected | 20.1 | 10.4 | 3.5 | |
| Question 3 | ||||
| 1 | Observed | 26 | 6 | 0 |
| Expected | 15.3 | 11.4 | 5.2 | |
| 2 | Observed | 20 | 11 | 1 |
| Expected | 15.3 | 11.4 | 5.2 | |
| 3 | Observed | 1 | 18 | 15 |
| Expected | 16.3 | 12.1 | 5.6 | |
| Question 4 | ||||
| 1 | Observed | 14 | 12 | 6 |
| Expected | 9.8 | 10.4 | 11.8 | |
| 2 | Observed | 16 | 10 | 6 |
| Expected | 9.8 | 10.4 | 11.8 | |
| 3 | Observed | 0 | 10 | 24 |
| Expected | 10.4 | 11.1 | 12.5 | |
For Question 1, there was a significant association between the groups and understanding levels (χ2 = 39.2, df = 4, p < 0.01). Among the three groups, Group 3 had a larger percentage of respondents with a high level (C) of understanding of aspects of NOS, while Group 1 had a larger percentage of respondents with a low level (A) of understanding. A Cramer's V of 0.447 and degrees of freedom = 4 indicates a strong association between the group and levels of understanding. For a high level (C) of understanding of NOS, among the 3 groups, Group 3 ranked highest, while Group 1 ranked the lowest. For a low level (A) of understanding of NOS, among the 3 groups, Group 1 had the highest percentage, while Group 3 had the lowest.
For Question 2, chi square analysis was not possible as three of the cells have expected counts less than 5. Hence, Fischer's Exact Test of Independence was used to analyze these data. The Fisher's exact test statistic is 34.4, with a p value < 0.01. A Cramer's V of 0.428 and degrees of freedom = 2 indicate a large effect size. Hence, there is strong association between the groups and levels of understanding. For a high level (C) of understanding of NOS, among the 3 groups, Group 3 ranked highest. Both Group 1 and Group 2 did not have any respondents with a high level (C) of understanding of NOS, however Group 2 had a higher percentage of respondents with a mid-level (B) of understanding of NOS. For a low level (A) of understanding of NOS, among the 3 groups, Group 1 had the highest percentage, while Group 3 had the lowest.
For Question 3, there was a significant association between groups and understanding levels (χ2 = 53.3, df = 4, p < 0.01). Among the three groups, Group 3 had a larger percentage of respondents with a high level (C) of understanding of selected aspects of NOS, while Group 1 had a larger percentage of respondents with a low level (A) of understanding. A Cramer's V of 0.552 and degrees of freedom = 2 indicate a large effect size. Hence there is strong association between groups and levels of understanding. For a high level (C) of understanding of NOS among the 3 groups, Group 3 ranked highest, while Group 1 ranked lowest. For a low level of understanding (A) of NOS, among the 3 groups, Group 1 had the highest percentage, while Group 3 had the lowest.
For Question 4, there was a significant association between groups and understanding levels (χ2 = 41.3, df = 4, p < 0.01). A Cramer's V of 0.409 and degrees of freedom = 2 indicates a large effect size. Hence there is strong association between the groups and levels of understanding. Among the 3 groups, Group 3 had a larger percentage of respondents with a high level (C) of understanding of the selected aspects of NOS, while Group 1 had a larger percentage of respondents with low level (A) of understanding. For a high level (C) of understanding of NOS, among the 3 groups, Group 3 ranked highest while the Groups 1 and 2 had about equal percentages. Group 1, however, had a slightly higher percentage of respondents with a mid-level (B) of understanding of NOS compared to Group 2. For low levels (A) of understanding of NOS, among the 3 groups, Group 1 had the highest percentage, while Group 3 had the lowest.
Influence of teaching based on instructor–student interactions in the context of indigenous scientific discovery
Excerpts from instructor–student exchanges are now presented to show how the instructor used the auxiliary questions as scaffolding instructions to stimulate students’ reflections and discussion. Of interest to note is that the questions posed by the instructor were to let the responses emerge naturally from the students in the context of the explicit framing of the questions in the instrument.On the influence on science from politics, society, economy and culture, the following exchange was illuminating. The student was able to present a convincing case of why in the matter of replication of a finding, such as a cure for malaria, the ecosystem of indigenous plants and the documentation of their medicinal uses over many centuries is not something that can be overlooked or replicated in another country with a shorter cultural history, and which is aspiring to work along similar lines. That is, the influence of society and culture is at work here (Table 8).
| Teacher question | Student response |
|---|---|
| T: Do you think the same scientific discovery can be replicated by scientists in other countries at about the same time? | S9: Maybe not. |
| T: Why not? | S9: Such as the differences of regions |
| T: Can you explain it in detail? | S9: It may be different from country to country. That is, artemisinin may be present in China, but not in the North and South Poles…. Then there is social culture. China has a culture of thousands of years, and some indigenous plants have grown. After several generations of research, a lot of cultural knowledge will be deposited in our history. There are a lot of medicine including technology can be [gotten] from ancient experience from the history of the cultural knowledge accumulation. We can extract experience. For example, like artemisinin, Tu youyou found inspiration in the ancient books. Like the United States, its cultural and historical time is shorter and it may lack in this aspect…. |
The emphasis on empirical evidence can be gleaned from the following exchange. This exchange reiterates the importance of not just relying on the reputation of a scientist when it comes to a finding but also the need to get data from other sources as well (Table 9).
| Teacher questioning | Student response |
|---|---|
| T: Why not accept his discovery since she is a very famous scientist? | S22: I do not think it should be accepted right away, because it's kind of contingent. |
| S1: Because scientists can make mistakes too, maybe not. | |
| T: Can you give an example of a time in history when scientists also made mistakes? | S1: Aristotle's idea of which falls first, heavy objects or light objects, was later proved wrong by Galileo's repeated experiments. |
| T: Oh! So do we just repeat the experiment in exactly the same context as Prof Tu and confirm the effectiveness of artensinin? | S11: I do not think so, it should be done on rats first, then on monkeys and different people…. |
| T: Why? | S13: The scientific conclusion should not be accidental, but should be universally applicable. Artemisinin cannot just be effective for people in Beijing, but ineffective for people in Hainan. |
| S25: Yes, be rigorous. One experiment does not prove it is right. | |
| T: How do we show this rigor? | S25: Let other scientists repeat it, or do it yourself. Otherwise you can not just show once [in one test] that the drug is effective. |
| T: Can you give an example in history when scientists accidentally discovered something and then repeated it? | S25: Oh. My teacher told us that Oster accidentally found the magnetic effect of electric current…. |
On the diversity of scientific methods, the following exchanges are relevant. It articulates the point that diversity in thinking and reserves of appropriate prior knowledge are important in scientific discovery as these may lead to different approaches in tackling a research problem (Table 10).
| Teacher questioning | Student response |
|---|---|
| T: Do you think that another scientist trained in laboratory techniques can come up with a similar discovery? | S21: Not really. |
| T: Why? | S21: Because everyone's thinking is different and their knowledge reserve is different, everyone has their own opinions and views on the same issue. So their experimental methods are different. |
| T: Do all scientists use experimental methods? | S11: Some are theoretical, not experimental. |
| T: Can you give us an example? | S11: The inclined plane friction experiment, the rougher, the greater the friction. But when there's no friction, [the laws of] how things move, that's just a theoretical derivation, right. |
| T: So if scientists take different approaches to the same problem, can they come to the same conclusion? Does it mean that there is more than one way to come up with such a discovery? | S6: There should be a different approach. Maybe chemically, I do not know. Ha ha…. |
| T: Then you can give us another example. | S3: I read a book that said that in the past, we could study our ancestors with fossils, but now we can also use gene sequencing. We humans are found to have originated in Africa. |
On the influence of creativity and imagination, the following exchange illustrates the point that looking at things from an unconventional perspective can be a harbinger for creativity/imagination (Table 11). While the reasons advanced are valid, it does not quite encompass the multi-faceted aspects of these constructs but only certain aspects, not surprisingly in view of the limited context afforded.
| Teacher questioning | Student response |
|---|---|
| T: The discovery of artemisinin is very remarkable. Do you think any scientist or anyone can come up with such a discovery? | S4: I do not think so. We know a biologist in biology class who looked at a cell in a microscope, did not know it was a cell at first, and then the biologist named it a cell, and the ordinary person would probably see it and not care, so…. |
| T: You do not think the ordinary person would notice? | S4: Yes. |
| T: Why? Why do scientists notice, but ordinary people do not? Explain. | S11: Maybe scientists are different from ordinary people. |
| T: What's the difference? Do these scientists have any special qualities compared to ordinary people? | S8: Perhaps [scientists] have a thirst for knowledge. |
| S1: Perseverance, attention. | |
| T: Do not ordinary people persevere? | S1: … should be this kind of exploration and desire for the thing itself. |
The following exchange illustrates how the construct of creativity/imagination was conceptualized by two students (Table 12).
| Teacher questioning | Student response |
|---|---|
| T: Well, imagination is really important for science research. Can you explain your understanding of imagination and creativity with the discovery of artemisinin? | S8: Creativity and imagination can lead to a different research method. According to their[scientists] own ideas…. |
| T: Can you take artemisinin as an example to explain? | S8: Extract [artemisinin] with ether at low temperature. |
| T: Where does this creativity come into the picture for this research? | S1: It should be methodological creativity. |
| T: So where else is imagination and creativity needed in science research? | S25: And Tu Youyou came up with the idea of harvesting juice from leaves. |
| T: How did she get the idea to extract it from leaves? | S25: Get inspiration from the records in ancient books, imagine that the juice on the leaves may be rich. |
| T: What role does imagination play here? | S25: Can suggest directions for research. Direct extraction to the leaves, not the roots…. |
Generally, the instructor, using the auxiliary questions as scaffolding instruction, was able to trigger cognitive conflict in students and thus stimulate their discussion and reflection in an authentic and culturally relevant context, which can lead their responses to emerge naturally to the extent possible. More importantly, students used the details from the process of the discovery of an anti-malarial drug to prove, respond to, and reflect on these questions about NOS posed by the instructor. Therefore, this discussion and reflection from instructor–student interactions also embodied the teaching role of the discovery of the anti-malarial drug. The effectiveness of the culturally relevant teaching with explicit-reflective activities based on indigenous science practices when auxiliary questions was used as scaffolding can be valued from the final results presented above.
Discussion
NOS has become an important area of emphasis in school science education, including chemistry education. A number of intervention approaches have been reported in the literature. Our study builds on the earlier works of researchers and explores a culturally responsive teaching approach that does not seem to have been used or used minimally. It is based on the research work of a Chinese scientist who won the Nobel Prize in Medicine/Physiology in 2015 for work done earlier. It was noted that the indigenous link has helped to pique interest in the content of the article among the samples in the two experimental groups.Irrespective of the variant of the explicit-reflective approach used in our study, there was no need for cultural border crossings (for a contrasting example, see Aikenhead, 2001) for the samples in our study as school science in China is anchored in a curricular framework that is international in scope but still rooted in Chinese tradition. That is, the quantum of NOS gains, irrespective of group, obviates the need for cultural border crossings. In other words, whatever differences in the way the two experimental groups fared can be explained on the basis of the differing explicit-reflective approach used rather than attributing these to cultural barriers, if any (Sutherland and Dennick, 2002).
While most of the NOS interventions in the literature have been conducted using topics related to the school science curricula – for example atomic theory (Irwin, 2000) and periodic table (Mokiwa, 2017), an approach that leverages contemporary scientific developments of interest to foster NOS attributes does not seem to have been adequately explored and seems desirable to us for a few reasons. Firstly, when school level topics are used as a basis for NOS interventions, there is a possibility that students may think that NOS applies only to knowledge that has a long history – for example, atomic theory, nature of light, evolution, periodic table, etc. In contrast, when focusing on NOS using a contemporary scientific development as a basis, students can also come to realize certain aspects of NOS therein. Secondly, the latter approach can show that science is a dynamic and living enterprise, and not some fossilized knowledge system. Of interest to note is that the NOS study was carried out with samples who are deeply immersed in Chinese culture, including the Chinese language. Science and technology are well embedded in Chinese society, and the Chinese are proud of their scientific heritage (Yoke, 2000). Therefore, for non-Western students such as Chinese students, contemporary historical case studies on science are likely to be able to stimulate interest in the cultural aspect of science development, as evidenced by students showing appreciation of the non-Western cultural contribution to science development. The curriculum designer or teacher should not design science teaching in isolation from the social, cultural and historical background (Yacoubian, 2020). Culturally relevant or responsive teaching can make science learning more effective for students in non-Western cultures (Klos, 2006).
The two experimental groups, not surprisingly, showed improvements in NOS attributes after the interventions, though to varying extents. Compared to the reference group (Group 1), which provided some baseline measure for the NOS attributes explored, the understandings were located mainly at levels 0 and 1 for Group 2; learning gains were noted, overall, especially for the second experimental group (Group 3). This is consistent with other studies in the literature which showed that an explicit-reflective approach (Akerson et al., 2000) with instructor mediation based on authentic and culturally relevant cases is especially conducive for promoting gains in NOS attributes. The percentage of students who attained levels 1–4 (Table 6) in Group 3 is much more than for the other two groups. Between the reference group (proxy for pretest) and the first experimental group (Group 2), results indicated that for both Q1 and Q3, the number of students attaining at least levels 1 and 2 increased slightly (see Table 6) for Group 2.
We now answer the first research question. For each sub-question herein, the distribution of responses of the three groups in the respective reason indicators provides some indication of the students’ thinking with respect to the NOS attribute of interest. The hierarchical levels the responses have reached affords further scope to characterize their overall progression in understanding.
In relation to the first sub-question on ‘What do students think about the role of sociocultural contexts in the development of science?’, while gains were registered overall in terms of responses parked within a number of the reason indicators for all three groups (Table 5), that for Group 3 is greatest as more responses were found for all four reason indicators. This trend is also supported when the hierarchical levels of understanding (Table 6) are examined – more students reached levels 3 & 4 understanding in Group 3 than in Group 2, where none reached these levels. Surprisingly, two students from Group 1 reached level 3 understanding but not level 4 – we cannot discount the possibility of a small number of students who have read widely as part of their general knowledge or be able to reflect more deeply than others. This is an exception for Group 1 and cannot be generalized. While the foregoing trends generally indicate varying levels of gains from the intervention for all the three groups, it is clear that instructor-mediated intervention is more effective when the emphasis is on registering at least modest learning gains. There was recognition that the work of scientists is undergirded by non-epistemic factors (García-Carmona and Acevedo-Díaz, 2017) – political, economic and institutional, in particular.
In relation to the second sub-question on ‘What do students think about scientists recommending that an experiment be repeated and in different situations?’, while there are low numbers of students from Groups 1 and 2 for reason indicators 2–4, these were enhanced for Group 3. When considering hierarchical levels of understanding, neither Group 1 nor 2 had responses in levels 2, 3 and 4 – Group 3 had responses in levels 2 and 3 but not in level 4. Once again, pedagogy is a contributory factor for registering modest learning gains. Generally, students from China have more difficulties in understanding empirical evidence of science as classical NOS than other aspects of NOS, which has also been proved by some researches (Liang et al., 2009; Wan et al., 2018). It may be related to the Confucian culture of China. Some features of Confucianism which represents Chinese culture emphasize the dialectical unity of man's subject and object, and hardly distinguish between opinions and facts, which are greatly different from the classical views and are similar to contemporary views of NOS (Chen et al., 2022; Wan et al., 2018). The finding from Qu et al. (2017) has verified that the features of Confucianism have negative correlations with the views of classical NOS. Hence, it is reasonable that our intervention had some difficulties in improving Chinese students' views in relation to empirical evidence of science.
In relation to the third sub-question on ‘Do students think that scientists adopt diverse scientific methods in their research?’, while only a few reason indicators were mentioned by Groups 1 and 2, that for Group 3 showed, overall, large numbers of responses parked under the various indicators. This trend is also reflected in the populating of the various hierarchical levels in Table 6.
In relation to the fourth sub-question on ‘What do students think of the role of creativity and imagination in research?’, this aspect seems to be better teased out for all groups but more so for Group 3. For both Groups 1 and 2, at least half of the students were in levels 1 and 2 while for Group 3, all were in levels 1 to 4. Though these constructs are somewhat abstract when referenced to scientific research, it seems that the students in Group 3 were better able to conceptualize its underpinnings. There was recognition that the construct in question can come in at any stage of scientific research – even in the methodological stage.
In relation to the second research question on ‘What is the efficacy of the three variants of the explicit-reflective approach for learning about NOS?’ all three variants have elicited gains, but to varying extents. This further supports the efficacy of the explicit-reflective approach in promoting NOS (Akerson et al., 2000). The approach based on reading/re-reading of the article followed by reflection showed, overall, the least gains. Clearly, there is a limit to what students can achieve when social construction of knowledge (Kragh, 1998) is not in operation. The same approach but with group discussions promoted some gains in a number of NOS attributes, thus underscoring the effectiveness of socio-constructivism in mediating learning gains overall. Here, we must also not underestimate the role of the ‘knowledgeable other’ (Campbell and Hodges, 2020) among the students in levelling up the group understanding to the extent possible. With instructor mediation (Xu et al., 2020) complementing social construction of knowledge, gains in NOS understanding were, overall, relatively more for Group 3.
When comparing the data for the three groups, the role of the instructor in mediating the proceedings of the discussion is important, thus further helping to foster the requisite NOS attributes. With the instructor asking probing questions, there is a limit to how much students can figure out on their own, so pedagogy is important. Simple reading of the article is helpful but not sufficient to promote gains comparable with that of the approach where instructor scaffolding is at work in tandem with sub-group discussions. For Group 2, where reading of the article was followed by small sub-group discussions, overall, there were more students who attained level 1 and above as compared to the reference group. The social construction of knowledge in groups also comes into play here.
Though the present study supported the efficacy of the explicit-reflective approach for NOS interventions in terms of learning gains, the gains were not maximal. We are of the view that, given the nature of the intervention – which focused on a discovery by a Nobel Prize winning Chinese scientist and one that can possibly resonate with the samples from a cultural standpoint, the gains in NOS attributes (especially Group 3) are still noteworthy, especially as this is not related to a topic in the school science syllabus. Even in other NOS studies in the literature, we have not come across any intervention where authors have reported maximal gains.
The choice of the four discussion questions is also noteworthy. Not being ‘forced choice’ questions, their open-ended nature allowed students to elaborate on their understanding to the extent possible. This also helped to address the limitation of just one question for each NOS attribute. The student responses have allowed us to mine the data for useful insights into their understanding and park these at different levels.
In general, teaching activities based on endogenous scientific episodes can help students to develop ideas about NOS and thus promote development of ideas about NOS towards more informed versions. In this sense, the discussion and argumentation encouraged and oriented by the instructor was found to be very helpful.
Though the approach uses a Chinese science context, it is not clear to what extent the learning outcomes (in terms of NOS conceptions) were specifically due to this context. We have reasons to believe that the context made some difference. It was noted that the students in Groups 2 and 3 were especially enthused on learning about the discovery made by a Chinese Nobel Laureate – in contradistinction to topics in school science, which has an overly modern focus in the treatment of subject matter. In the process of instructor–student and student–student interactions, they discussed, argued and reflected on these questions about NOS around the context of artemisinin discovery. For example, as can be seen in Table 7, the students used details of Tu Youyou, inspired by Chinese traditional medicine culture, as a convincing case to illustrate why the same scientific discovery cannot be replicated by scientists in other countries at about the same time.
In this study, it was found that the NOS teaching effect in Group 2 (that is, allowing students to carry out small sub-group discussions and reflections) was somewhat higher than that of the reference group, while in Group 3, where the instructor used auxiliary and supportive questions to trigger students' reflecting and arguments, the effect was even higher. In Group 3, when a student was asked to answer the teacher's questions, it has to be emphasized that while the teacher provided heuristic feedback such as giving a counter-example to stimulate students’ cognitive conflict, other students also listened to the interactive exchanges between the teacher and the student, and also reflected on their own understanding. Therefore, this kind of teaching approach, being similar to Socratic questioning, tended to involve all students rather than just a single student, in accord with the Chinese cultural context of collectivism rather than individualism. It has been noted as an effective classroom teaching strategy for Asian students (Cheng and Wan, 2016). Some studies have shown that this can promote deep science learning for students rather than simple superficial and rote learning (Cortazzi, 1998; Neber et al., 2008; Chiou et al., 2013; Lin and Tsai, 2013). This explains why students were not very effective at reflecting through self-directed sub-group discussions (Group 2). It is a possible reason for the limited NOS gains in Group 2. A study involving students from primary and middle school in Hong Kong found that classroom environments with teacher support and participation can foster students' learning and encourage them to use cognitive and metacognitive learning strategies, rather than self-directed learning and cooperation, as is commonly believed in the West (Li and Yin, 2010). Based on the findings of this study, we could infer that teachers need to use some supportive and auxiliary questions to trigger students to argue, think, and gradually guide them to reflect on and understand NOS, especially for Chinese students or students from other non-Western countries.
The findings also support the theoretical frameworks advanced earlier. We focused on four NOS constructs. This emphasis has been found to be helpful in making sense of the data obtained and situating our findings from an NOS perspective. The framework on constructivism is also very apparent in the findings. As evinced from the data for Group 1, which served as a reference group to generate some baseline data for the sample's overall NOS understandings prior to the study, the gains seen especially in Group 3 suggest that the students’ prior knowledge has helped them to imbibe the content being discussed. This is further facilitated by group interactions, that is, social constructivism is at work here as well. Conceptual change is also very much apparent at the end of the intervention, especially for Group 3, though gains were not maximal. The improvements seen, especially in Group 3, further lend support for the efficacy of the explicit-reflective approach for the NOS intervention used in this study.
In summary, the contributions of this study to the NOS literature are as follows:
(1) The approach leveraged an episode of indigenous scientific discovery as the basis for exploring NOS views on four selected aspects. We are not aware of any prior study that has used such an approach.
(2) It seems that popular science articles written about indigenous scientific discoveries have not been explored for their potential to foster NOS attributes, especially among high school students. Our study aimed to contribute towards this in some way.
(3) The approach focused on a topic that is not related to the school science syllabus.
(4) The approach used relatively short intervention times, and learning gains were noted, especially for Group 3. This suggests that a class activity on NOS focusing on indigenous scientific episodes can just focus on the approach adopted for Group 3.
(5) It explored NOS views of high school students in mainland China, a sample that has hardly been studied or minimally studied, thus helping to contribute in some way to the corpus of the NOS literature, which has focused more on NOS views of students in Western settings.
Implications
Most studies in the NOS literature with school students have focused on approaches that leverage the history of science for topics taught at the school level (Williams and Rudge, 2016), hands-on inquiry activities related to the school curricula (Allchin et al., 2014), argumentation on socio-scientific issues (Khishfe, 2014), etc. While any of these can be a useful approach for school students, we feel that an approach which focuses on suitable scientific topics of research interest contributed by non-Western culture can also be promoted as part of further NOS learning for students, especially those coming from a non-Western background such as the samples in our study. Such an approach can further reiterate to non-Western students that aspects of NOS also resonate in scientific endeavors of indigenous and contemporary interest. Through an explicit-reflective approach, it is possible to engage students on points of interest pertinent to NOS. In this regard, the scaffolding potential of the instructor cannot be downplayed as school students are somewhat new when it comes to NOS, and the mediating influence of the instructor can help to raise standards of NOS understandings beyond the zone of proximal development.The challenge in such an approach is finding a suitable article pitched at a level that students can follow. There are so many such articles that have popularized contemporary scientific developments. Even if an article on a topic of current interest is not available, there is nothing to stop teachers from working with suitable stakeholders to come up with a suitable article that can be the basis for such an approach.
When implementing such approaches, it must be borne in mind that the full suite of NOS attributes is unlikely to be covered in any article in the popular press. For example, in our study, we noted that about four NOS aspects can be reasonably extracted from the article – socio-cultural, empirical, scientific method, and creativity/imagination. When using such an approach, it is better to target a nominal number of NOS attributes – at least four, so that sufficient time can be allocated to fostering these aspects via the explicit-reflective approach. Targeting more NOS attributes in the limited time can lead to cognitive overload in students, while targeting fewer NOS attributes can impoverish their overall NOS experience.
The findings of this study suggest that reading/re-reading of the text or reading of the text followed by student discussions, while effective to some extent in promoting gains in NOS attributes in the allocated time, is still subservient to the approach involving instructor mediation. In other words, in school practice, it is more effective to go straight for the approach with instructor mediation in the contexts of indigenous science discoveries. The discourse which occurs in such an approach can be very helpful in engaging students as well as in clarifying doubts about NOS.
The findings also reiterate the importance of short interventions if the goal is to ensure somewhat modest learning gains. This is especially pertinent when curriculum time is rather precious and the era of Covid restrictions further limits access to school samples.
Limitations
A critique that can be made of this study is that the duration of the intervention for Group 1 (as a proxy for the pretest and as the reference group) is less than that for Groups 2 and 3. While it is known that time-on-task can make a difference in the effectiveness of interventions, we would reiterate that the purpose of forming Group 1 is solely to get some baseline information of NOS knowledge of the overall sample. Since the three groups were formed by random sampling, and Group 1 was further assigned as the reference group via further random sampling, the duration assigned for this group to read/re-read and reflect was adequate to get some indication of baseline NOS knowledge of this group and, by extension, the sample. We do not think it will make a further difference if this group were forced to further re-read the article and reflect to ensure that the duration of their intervention is the same as that for the other two groups. Actually, Group 1 was also asked to go through the article again and reflect on it outside classroom time – this may well have caused the intervention time for this group to approach closer to that of the other two groups.The study focused on a sample of senior high school students in a school in China. Their views of NOS cannot be extrapolated to represent the views of all such students in the school or in the country.
The absence of a proper pretest is a shortcoming of our study. As mentioned earlier, we were constrained by the number of visits that can be made to the school owing to the Covid pandemic. We used Group 1 as a proxy for pretest and as a reference to help mitigate this shortcoming to some extent. For the same reason as above, interviews could not be held with the students. This could have helped to unpack further nuances in students’ understanding of the four NOS attributes. Similarly, it was not possible to do a delayed posttest.
Owing to the nature of the article chosen for the study, it was not possible to focus on the full suite of NOS attributes as only limited attributes were apparent. We therefore focused on only four key aspects of NOS that were reasonably inherent in the article.
Conclusions and future work
The NOS intervention using the explicit-reflective approach was, overall, found to be effective, though to varying extents for the three groups. The scaffolding potential provided by the instructor through the use of auxiliary questions during discussion has been an important determinant in further improving NOS understandings for Group 3. Whilst the approaches based on reading of the article and reading followed by small sub-group discussions also promoted nominal NOS gains, these are, overall, still lower than that of the approach with instructor mediation cum sub-group discussions.We can think of a few directions for future work. We are desirous of using senior high school students for another study involving a different discovery and focusing on a suite of other NOS attributes. The efficacy of the explicit-reflective approaches used in this study suggests that it can be extended to other topics in chemistry where there is indigenous content.
Conflicts of interest
There is no conflict of interest to disclose.Acknowledgements
We thank the two reviewers for their careful reading of our manuscript and for offering constructive comments for revisions. This research was sponsored by a project of the National Social Science Foundation of China, which is entitled as the Construction of the Model of Scientific Literacy for Primary and Secondary School Students within Confucian Culture and Its Empirical Study (BHA180145).References
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