HUANG, YuanLing

黄, 苑菱

[SUMMARY] The purpose of this study serves as a kick-starter to develop lesson units for authentic science for middle school science. These lessons were developed to deliver content knowledge with emphasis on elements of Nature of Science (NOS). This is a short-term study to research on the feasibility of such lesson units in teaching both content and NOS explicitly. The topics selected for development are Chemical Reactions and Atoms & Molecules respectively. The series of lessons were conducted with two classes of 8th Grade Japanese students. Data, both qualitative and quantitative, was collected through a few ways: lesson observations to assess the viability of the lesson; pre- and post-test to evaluate students’ understanding of NOS; and questionnaire to gather students’ perceptions of the lesson. From the observations of the classes, students were engaged in carrying out the activities to elicit NOS elements. In addition, from the results of the pre-test and post-test, there was an improvement in the understanding of elements of NOS. Furthermore, from the results of the questionnaire, the lesson units were well-received by the students and students were able to learn both content and elements of NOS. These results showed promise in the teaching both syllabus content and elements of NOS in an authentic context.