Children’s views of the nature of science (NOS) was a great concern for science educators for years and accumulated fairly well throughout the years by many research studies (e.g. Lederman, 2007; Khishfe & Abd-El-Khalick, 2002; McComas, 1998). The researchers of this study conducted research on investigating the effect of a science camp program that they developed and improved in every summer for the last five years to introduce NOS aspects by explicit-reflective guided-inquiry and explicit NOS activities to 6^th and 7^th graders. But, they found out that science camp program was more effective in introducing experimental and tentative NOS than other NOS aspects (Leblebicioglu, Metin, Yardimci, & Berkyurek, 2011). Then, they decided that it is more reasonable to zoom into the more effective part of the science camp program and try to do it better. Scientific inquiry is very close to experimental NOS. The researchers decided introduce Nature of Scientific Inquiry (NOSI) in the 2001 summer science camp. NOSI was defined by Scwartz, Lederman, & Lederman (2008). They determined seven aspects of NOSI. These are;

a)      Scientific questions guide investigations

b)      Multiple methods of scientific investigations

c)      Multiple purposes of scientific investigations

d)     Justification of scientific knowledge

e)      Recognition and handling of anomalous data

f)       Distinctions between data and evidence

g)      Community of practice

In order to investigate children’s views about NOSI, Views of Scientific Inquiry-Secondary (VOSI-S) (Scwartz, Lederman, & Lederman, 2008) questionnaire was applied. The questions in VOSI-S were open-ended. VOSI instruments were rarely used in previous studies. Thus, related research was scarce. But, teaching scientific inquiry is important for many countries such as U.S. (AAAS, 1989), England (DfEE/QCA, 1999), and Turkey. The effect of inquiry-based science education were generally researched in school context (for a review, see Minner, Levy, & Century (2010). Various findings across 138 analyzed studies indicate a clear, positive trend favoring inquiry-based instructional practices, particularly instruction that emphasizes student active thinking and drawing conclusions from data. Teaching strategies that actively engage students in the learning process through scientific investigations are more likely to increase conceptual understanding than are strategies that rely on more passive techniques, which are often necessary in the current standardized-assessment laden educational environment (Minner, Levy, & Century, 2010, p. 474).

Teaching scientific inquiry in informal learning environments would be interesting. In addition, science camps in which children take active role in scientific inquiry at the nature and draw conclusions from first-hand data would support their understanding of the process and aspects of the scientific inquiry better.

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