Pre-service Primary Teachers' Scientific Knowledge and Attitudes towards Science Learning and Their Influence on the Understanding of the Nature of Science

The present study focused on the knowledge about the nature of science and the question of the extent to which this knowledge could be explained by employing scientific knowledge, as well as attitudes towards science learning. We obtained data from 171 Spanish pre-service primary school teachers on their knowledge about: a) science concepts, b) science process skills, c) the nature of science (that was split into science construction and validation and the role and function of scientific models), and d) their attitudes towards science learning. Quantitative and qualitative analyses provided interesting results: a) there were significant correlations between any pair of scores of conceptual …