Glimpses of the Nature of Science in the Earth's Crust

Continents: A Jigsaw Puzzle with no Mechanism was a helpful tool in seeing how to fit different aspects of the Nature of Science (NOS) into a content lesson.  The authors of the article presented the different parts of the content in the way that they unfolded, then posed a question to help students look at a deeper message in the narrative: why things happened in the way that they did; what caused certain things to happen or not to happen; what caused the change, or the resistance to a change, in thought.  This article puts forth several ideas that can be translate into important aspects of NOS: theory laden NOS, empirical NOS, tentative NOS, and the theory-law NOS.

The authors have posed several great questions at key points in the article.  For instance, after reading about how two scientists came to two very different conclusions after interpreting the same data, there was a break in the content where the idea that scientists have to interpret the evidence that they are presented with.  This point presents the opportunity to mention either the empirical and theory laden aspects of NOS - science fact is based on evidence, and the theories that a scientist subscribes to will affect how they interpret the data.  A brilliant move by the authors from my point of view.

In my coursework I've come across the term Nature of Science several times, and in the past, I have had to work to see ways to teach it effectively.  The ideas contained in that seemingly simple phrase are complex and interconnected to the point that you can't always tell where one stops and another starts.  This article/story is a great example of how to bring these behind the scenes structures into the foreground in an way that they can be understood.