Abstract

This research investigated the effectiveness of teaching a proposed unit on the characteristics of scientific knowledge in enhancing pre-service classroom teachers’ understanding of the nature of science (NOS) and acquisition of its ethics. The study sample included forty-four fourth-year pre-service classroom teachers enrolled in the Science Teaching Methods course during the first semester of the 2022 to 2023 academic year at the University of Petra, Jordan. Two scales were used: the Nature of Science Understanding Scale (SUSSI [Student Understanding of Science and Scientific Inquiry]) and the Ethics of Science Scale. A twenty-four-item SUSSI questionnaire was translated into Arabic to measure pre-service classroom teachers’ understanding of the NOS. The researcher also developed a forty-item questionnaire covering twelve principles of ethics of science proposed by Resnik to measure students’ acquisition of the ethics of science. Both scales were administered before and after the proposed unit was taught. The SPSS statistical program was used to calculate means, standard deviations, coefficients of reliability, Pearson correlation coefficient, and one-way analysis of variance. The study’s results indicate an increase in pre-service classroom teachers’ understanding of the NOS after they engaged with the proposed unit. The differences were statistically significant across the overall questionnaire, as well as in the following sub-domains: observations and inferences, imagination, creativity, and methodology. However, there was no observed effect on their acquisition of the ethics of science. The study recommended heightened attention to incorporating the NOS and its ethics into pre-service classroom teacher programs, whether by introducing new courses or addressing these issues more comprehensively within existing science teaching courses.