Research In Science Education, cilt.51, ss.757-782, 2021 (SSCI)
The effective continuing professional development (CPD) programs
primarily aim to have an impact on teachers’ knowledge bases, beliefs,
and views and their classroom practices, which rationally lead most of
the researchers to investigate those changes on teachers primarily.
Although neglected, the interrelationship between CPD programs and
students is considered complex, and CPDs ultimately aim to have an
impact on students’ views, too. Therefore, the purpose of this study is
to survey the changes of middle school students’ views of the nature of
science (NOS) by providing a large-scale CPD to their teachers and, in
other words, identify the impact of CPD on ultimate beneficiaries,
namely students. In this study, 10 science teachers’ data and, in the
first phase, 481 and, in the second phase, 422 students’ data and the
changes in their NOS views were analyzed. Results showed that the
students’ and teachers’ NOS views changed positively. For the impact of
teachers on the students’ views, the teachers’ prior NOS knowledge,
years of experience, and the number of implemented activities were found
to be the influential factors for the transmission of NOS views.