RELATIONSHIP OF NATURE OF SCIENCE UNDERSTANDING, CRITICAL THINKING, AND UNDERSTANDING OF CONTROVERSIAL OR SSI GEOSCIENCE CONCEPTS

This study continues and expands upon earlier work by the author (2018) which investigated the relationship between ideas about the Nature of Science (NOS) by pre-service and inservice elementary and middle school teachers and their understanding of geologic time. Students with a better understanding of NOS and the nature of scientific theories tended to score higher on geologic time questions. Much has been written about critical thinking (White, et al., 2011; Kim, et al., 2012; Arsal, 2017); NOS (Cofre, et al., 2017; Akerson, et al., 2017; Aflalo, 2018), and the teaching of controversial science topics and socio-scientific issues (SSI), (Mason et al., 2014; Lombardi & Sinatra, 2013; Romano, 2012). Others have considered relationships between two of those three topics. Taber (2017) investigated the relationship between understanding of NOS and controversial science topics, especially evolution. Wang, et al. (2017) studied an SSI intervention and its relationship to critical thinking. Yacoubian and Khishfe (2018) published a dialogue comparing and contrasting critical thinking and argumentation as possible theoretical frameworks for addressing NOS and SSI, but no studies have been found that investigated relationships between the three topics, and specifically considering controversial geoscience/space science topics.

This study investigated the relationship of pre-service elementary/middle school teachers' scores on tests of critical thinking, NOS, and understanding of controversial Earth and space science topics. Fifty-eight future elementary and middle school teachers were administrated the VNOS-D+ (Lederman, et al., 2010), the Watson Glaser Critical Thinking Test (1980), and a test of controversial Earth/space science topics. Descriptive statistics and Pearson correlations were performed. Future research with these subjects will involve post-testing after the completion of an inquiry-based Earth Science for Teachers course. It will also include the addition of the Assessment of Critical Thinking Ability (ACTA) (White, et al., 2011), which not only tests individual critical thinking proficiencies, but also ability to analyse and compare several sources of information that present information on a topic.