Effect of a Science Camp on the Children’s Views of Tentative Nature of Science

Abstract

This study explored the effectiveness of a science camp on children’s views of the tentative nature of scientific knowledge. The method used to do so was a synthesized methodology of explicit reflective guided-inquiry, and several explicit Nature of Science (NOS) activities. The participants were 24 children who were at the 6^th and 7^th grades. VNOS D questionnaire (Lederman & Khishfe, 2002) was applied at the beginning and end of the science camp. All of the children were also interviewed in order to validate the questionnaire and enrich the data. The qualitative data were analyzed by using interpretive analysis. The results showed that more children accepted the tentativeness of scientific knowledge at the end of the camp. The children’s ideas about tentativeness of scientific knowledge in dinosaurs and meteorology domains were largely affected by the context of the questions especially at the beginning of the science camp.