Research in science education has recognized the importance of history and philosophy of science (HPS). Nature of science (NOS) is considered to be an essential part of HPS with important implications for teaching science. The role played by textbooks in developing students’ informed conceptions of NOS has been a source of considerable interest for science educators. In some parts of the world, textbooks become the curriculum and determine to a great extent what is taught and learned in the classroom. Given this background and interest, this monograph has evaluated NOS in university level general chemistry textbooks published in U.S.A. Most textbooks in this study provided little insight with respect to the nine criteria used for evaluating NOS. Some of the textbooks, however, inevitably refer to HPS and thus provide guidelines for future textbooks. A few of the textbooks go into considerable detail to present the atomic models of Dalton, Thomson, Rutherford, Bohr and wave mechanical to illustrate the tentative nature of scientific theories --- an important NOS aspect. These results lead to the question: Are we teaching science as practiced by scientists? An answer to this question can help us to understand the importance of NOS, by providing students an HPS-based environment, so that they too (just like the scientists) feel the thrill and excitement of discovering new things. This monograph provides students and teachers guidelines for introducing various aspects of NOS, based on historical episodes.
SpringerBriefs in Education For further volumes: http://www.springer.com/series/8914 Mansoor Niaz Arelys Maza • Nature of Science in General Chemistry Textbooks 123 Prof. Mansoor Niaz Epistemology of Science Group Department of Chemistry Universidad de Oriente Apartado Postal 90 6101 Cumaná, Estado Sucre Venezuela e-mail:
[email protected] Prof. Arelys Maza Epistemology of Science Group Department of Chemistry Universidad de Oriente Apartado Postal 90 6101 Cumaná, Estado Sucre Venezuela e-mail:
[email protected] ISSN 2211-1921 ISBN 978-94-007-1919-4 DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-1920-0 e-ISSN 2211-193X e-ISBN 978-94-007-1920-0 Springer Dordrecht Heidelberg London New York Ó Mansoor Niaz 2011 No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. Cover design: eStudio Calamar, Berlin/Figueres Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com) Acknowledgments Research reported here was supported in part by various grants from Consejo de Investigación, Universidad de Oriente (Venezuela). We would like to express our sincere thanks to the following members of our research group who participated in various stages of research by suggesting improvements that helped to clarify underlying issues related to nature of science: Ysmandi Páez, and Luis A. Montes. We have also benefitted from discussions and criticisms at different stages from: Fouad Abd-El-Khalick (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), Stephen Klassen (University of Winnipeg) and Liberato Cardellini (Università Politecnica delle Marche, Italy). The two anonymous reviewers provided constructive criticisms, which hel