Teaching “nature of science” with picture books for children

Science education research emphasizes the importance of not only focusing on specific phenomena in the teaching of science, but also on the Nature of Science (NOS). However NOS research has mostly focused on older students, and there is almost no NOS research focusing the preschool level. Research shows that stereotypical images are frequent, in school as well as in media, both concerning scientific knowledge and its processes and concerning researchers. As an example it is common that science is communicated as indisputable facts. This is part of the facts-tradition in school where scientific knowledge processes are often not mentioned. In a similar way a common image of the researcher is a white man, wearing lab coat and glasses, carrying a test tube. A pilot study (Hansson & Leden, 2016) on picture books for children, showed how this kind of stereotypical images of science and scientists often are strengthened, but sometimes also challenged in different ways. With a starting point in the results from the pilot study the aim of this presentation is to describe and discuss an upcoming study which will try out ways to use picture books to raise NOS issues in discussions between children and teachers in a preschool setting. This could mean highlighting issues such as How do we know this? What does the knowledge processes look like in science? Can knowledge change? What do a researcher do and what does he/she look like? Our assumption is that an inclusion of such issues in science teaching is important if common stereotypical images are to be challenged. Discussions about NOS in preschool could be a means to avoid reproducing the facts-tradition, and instead open up for more nuanced images of science and scientists, and thereby open up science for more children.