THE SCIENTIFIC UNDERSTANDING LEVEL OF PROSPECTIVE SCIENCE TEACHERS

Scientific understanding is important to science teachers. The way which science teachers use for explaining issues related to science also affects students' understanding of science. Therefore, as a measure of the prospective science teachers' understanding of science, their conceptions and descriptions on scientific issues compose the aim of this study. The views of 75 prospective science teachers who are selected by purposive sampling were probed about the meaning of scientific and being scientific, the scientific events, the scientific questions and the scientific knowledge through open ended questions. The results, which are based on significantly different categories, displayed that the prospective science teachers' understanding of scientific issues is generally based on the phenomenon and empirical based understanding and perceived features those address traditional view of science. Besides, they seem to have inadequate understanding of science regarding logical, relational, sociological and historical aspects. At the end some recommendations were proposed accordingly.