Analysis of biology-specific nature of science features in the biology curriculum (Bio-NOS)

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Bianca Reinisch
• Subject Area: General and Domain-Specific Teaching and Learning
• Term: from 2019 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 423393239

School textbooks are regarded as mediators between the intended (e.g., framework curricula), the implemented (e.g., school classes), and the achieved curriculum (e.g., competences of students).The development of an understanding of nature of science (NOS) contributes to the formation of scientific literacy, which corresponds to the intended curriculum in different countries (e.g., Germany: Bildungsstandards, 2004; USA: The Next Generation Science Standards, 2013). Research suggests that students’ understanding of NOS (achieved curriculum) is insufficient. In addition, it was found in several studies that school textbooks, which are considered as the potentially implemented curriculum, often fail to present NOS to the required standards. At the same time, the discipline-general NOS conceptualization, which is mostly used in these studies, is described as undifferentiated and not fully adequate. An alternative, discipline-specific conceptualization is provided by the theoretically based family resemblance approach (FRA). So far, a systematic, empirical examination of the FRA has yet not been done. The project aims to close this research gap.The project aims to identify and differentiate a NOS conceptualization that describes both discipline-general and biology-specific NOS categories. Thus, the project contributes to the extension of current NOS knowledge in the field of science education. The project aims to conduct a systematic, empirical investigation of the FRA and thus at an extension of the domain-general NOS conceptualization regarding biology-specific NOS characteristics.Within the project, biology textbooks will be digitized and made accessible to software-assisted analysis. Preliminary work has generated a category system of the FRA that serves as the basis for the analysis of the textbooks (deductive category application), which may get extended by an inductive coding method.In order to differentiate between discipline-general and biology-specific NOS content, experts (N=33) from the fields of biology, chemistry, physics, and philosophy of science will then be interviewed by means of a fully structured interview guideline to rate the subcategories. As part of a communicative validation, discrepancies among the experts will be identified and returned to them for additional expert commentary.The result of the two studies will be the identification of discipline-general and biology-specific NOS categories that exist in the potentially implemented biology curriculum.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants