Beyond Physics Content Knowledge: Modeling Competence Regarding Nature of Scientific Inquiry and Nature of Scientific Knowledge

In contemporary science education research, an adequate understanding of the 'nature of science' is regarded an important aspect of scientific literacy and, thus, a central goal of science education. At present, German science education standards only implicitly include nature of science aspects, yet. This dissertation project, therefore, aims to provide a first approach to include nature of science in the German science education standards. At the core of this dissertation, a theoretical model of competence is derived which defines competence regarding nature of science and distinguishes between Nature of Scientific Inquiry (NOSI) and Nature of Scientific Knowledge (NOS). Two studies were conducted to investigate the theoretical model's empirical validity. The studies included investigating the model's inner structure, a discrimination against control variables as well as a comparison of German and U.S. students.