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A study is presented that analyzed the pedagogical efficacy of reading opinion articles about methods of science, published in the media, in order to improve the meta-scientific understanding of 52 preservice primary teachers (PPTs) with regard to the topic. To this end, an activity was designed taking an explicit and reflective approach. The design of the activity required a short teaching intervention when being implemented in class in order to facilitate its integration into the program of the subject of science teaching. Before doing the activity, the PPTs’ prior conceptions about the nature of methods of science were diagnosed using the Opinions about Science, Technology and Society Questionnaire (COCTS, in its Spanish acronym). The activity consisted of reading the articles, and then responding in small work groups to a series of questions for reflection and debate on the topic. The groups’ responses were then shared and discussed in class. Once the activity had finished, the PPTs responded to the questionnaire again (post-test) in order to evaluate how their conceptions had progressed. There was an improvement in their understanding of various aspects of the nature of methods of science (e.g., scientists use a variety of methods in their research depending on the object of study, the context, and the resources available, or that the scientific method is an idealized, simplistic, and therefore poor representation of how scientists do research). These results show that the activity was effective in getting the PPTs to reflect and learn about the topic. Finally, the limitations of the study are discussed (e.g., the limited time frame to implement the activity and evaluate results), and some future research perspectives are given to improve the understanding of PPTs about the nature of methods of science.

The purpose of the article is to clarify peculiarities of general and specific scientific methods applied to linguistic research and to distinguish between induction, deduction, analysis and synthesis as well as descriptive, comparative, structural, sociolinguistic, psycholinguistic and mathematic methods. Theoretical justification of understanding, measuring and keeping distinctive features of the presented methods used in European linguistic researches is the finding of investigation. The practical value of the theoretical justification of methods is to use its results for fundamental studies of all lexico-semantic sub-systems of value paradigms of the Ukrainian, English and French language societies.

This paper aimed to investigate how the diversity of scientific methods is represented in practical items of college entrance examinations from three science subjects in China. The study was conducted based on the theoretical framework derived from Brandon’s Matrix consisting of four types of scientific methods. National Papers for comprehensive science examination in 2022 were selected as the analysis targets. The results revealed that the imbalanced representation of scientific methods existed in college entrance science examinations. The percentage of non-manipulative parameter measurement (NPM) was relatively high, while manipulative hypothesis testing (MHT) was presented in a limited capacity, indicating the practical items in China are less experimental. Furthermore, the distribution of the four types of scientific methods in practical items varied across the three science subjects. At the end of this paper, the implications of the findings and the suggestions for the further studies were discussed.

Despite broad consensus on the benefits of inquiry-based science education (IBSE), its implementation remains limited in secondary physics classrooms, partly due to naïve conceptions of the Nature of Science (NoS). This quantitative study characterizes preservice physics teachers’ (N = 26) initial NoS conceptions and views on IBSE at program entry and examines how specific epistemological beliefs relate to perceived implementation barriers in a small, single-institution sample. Using the PTIP and SUSSI instruments in a cross-sectional design, we applied nonparametric analyses with multiple-testing corrections. Participants showed relatively sophisticated conceptions of the tentativeness of scientific theories but naïve misconceptions about the distinction between scientific laws and theories. They strongly endorsed dialogic components of IBSE (discussion, argumentation) yet perceived severe external barriers (time, resources, assessment) and expressed only cautious support for student-designed investigations. Three correlations survived false discovery rate correction: understanding methodological pluralism (rejecting a single universal “scientific method”) was positively associated with both endorsement of inquiry practices and fewer perceived internal barriers, while endorsement of inquiry practices also correlated with lower internal difficulties. Other NoS dimensions showed no robust associations with views on IBSE. These findings suggest that fostering methodological pluralism as “epistemic security,” alongside realistic strategies for inquiry under constraints, should be a priority in teacher education, although the results should be interpreted as exploratory and not statistically generalizable beyond similar contexts without replication.

Researchers and practitioners have become increasingly interested in how early childhood programs prepare young children for science. Due to a number of factors, including educators’ low self-efficacy for teaching science and lack of educational resources, many early childhood classrooms do not offer high-quality science experiences for young children. However, high-quality science education has the potential to lay an important foundation for children’s knowledge and interest in science as well as reinforcing and integrating critical language, literacy, and math readiness skills. This paper examines the current research on science in preschool classrooms and provides suggestions on how to teach science that supports children’s development across domains. Using the scientific method to explore science with young children provides a systematic model for engaging children in observation, questioning, predicting, experimenting, summarizing, and sharing results. These processes encourage children’s use of language, literacy, and mathematics skills in authentic ways. Suggestions are provided for teachers to use the scientific method as their guide for generating scientific discovery in their classroom.

Recent advances in machine learning methods, along with successful applications across a wide variety of fields such as planetary science and bioinformatics, promise powerful new tools for practicing scientists. This viewpoint highlights some useful characteristics of modern machine learning methods and their relevance to scientific applications. We conclude with some speculations on near-term progress and promising directions.

Reproducibility is a confused terminology. In this paper, I take a fundamental view on reproducibility rooted in the scientific method. The scientific method is analysed and characterized in order to develop the terminology required to define reproducibility. Furthermore, the literature on reproducibility and replication is surveyed, and experiments are modelled as tasks and problem solving methods. Machine learning is used to exemplify the described approach. Based on the analysis, reproducibility is defined and three different degrees of reproducibility as well as four types of reproducibility are specified. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Reliability and reproducibility in computational science: implementing verification, validation and uncertainty quantification in silico’.