The Link Between Science Teacher Candidates’ Understandings of the Nature of Science and Their Epistemic Beliefs

While the epistemic beliefs are defined as beliefs about knowledge and knowing, the nature of science (NOS) is about the epistemological and ontological foundations of science, how scientists work, how scientific knowledge is produced, how it is tested and validated and how society affects or reacts to science. In this study, the link between pre-service science teachers’ general epistemic beliefs (GEB) and their understanding of NOS was examined qualitatively. Hermeneutic phenomenological design was used in the study and the data were obtained from semi-structured interviews with five pre-service science teachers who participated voluntarily. In the analysis, the links of two different phenomena were reached from a single data set. As a result of the research, specific links were found between different types of general epistemic belief dimensions, which are mostly sophisticated, and NOS dimensions. These links were found to confirm many of the divergent relationships quantitatively identified in the literature. In addition, as an original result, it was seen that the relationships previously identified with quantitative methods could be qualitatively differentiated and some relationships not found in the literature could be possible. As a result of the study, it was determined that pre-service science teachers justified their beliefs with their understanding of science and scientific knowledge. When this case is analyses in the light of the literature, it can be explained by the possible influence of science which constitutes the context of the participants. It can be said that the participants approximated their general epistemic beliefs to scientific epistemology in the manner of domain-specific epistemic beliefs (DEB) and finally concretized them with statements emphasizing their understanding of NOS. Moreover, the results imply that participants can justify their developed epistemic beliefs through authorities, both personal and with reference to science, according to the epistemological nature of the knowledge implied. In this respect, the research proposes a testable scheme that reveals holistic connections between GEB and NOS. It also encourages further research into the possible direction of causality underlying the transitivity between GEB–DEB–NOS and scientific epistemological beliefs in its context.