Promoting NOS understanding through explicit teaching of K-2 students in informal settings

This paper describes a Saturday science program for K-2 students designed to enhance their understanding of the nature of science. Teaching strategies were used to explicitly address all the elements of NOS—the role of empirical data, the distinction between observation and inference, the creative processes of science, the subjective (theory-laden) nature of research, and the tentative (though robust) NOS knowledge.