In science education, understanding the nature of science (NOS) is accepted as a crucial component of scientific literacy which requires being able to not only understand science content but also develop ideas for how science proceeds and how scientists work along with their values, beliefs and assumptions (Akerson, & Buzzelli, 2007). One of the most cited definitions of the term NOS was made by Lederman (1992) as “the epistemology of science, science as a way of knowing, or values and beliefs inherent to the development of scientific knowledge” (p. 331). In the science education literature, there are various different definitions of the term and no single definition is accepted as the correct one; however, there is an agreement on some general aspects of NOS that should be known by all scientifically literate people. Schwartz, Lederman, and Crawford (2004) listed these aspects as: tentativeness, empirical-basis, subjectivity, creativity, social and cultural embeddedness, observation and inference, and theories and laws. NOS understanding have been identified as an important and critical learner outcome by various science education documents all around the world (Lederman, 2007). Similarly, in Turkey, the latest science and technology program placed great emphasis on the development of scientific literacy and understanding of the NOS. However, despite all attempts to enhance learners' NOS understanding, recent studies still reveal that learners having difficulties to develop adequate views of NOS (Lederman, 2007) and these difficulties have been found to be related to their characteristics (Akerson, & Donnelly, 2008). One of these characteristics is metacognitive awareness. Metacognition refers to “the active monitoring and consequent regulation and orchestration of these processes in relation to the cognitive objects or data on which they bear, usually in service of some concrete goal or objective." (Flavell, 1976, p.232). It is considered to be composed of two essential components; knowledge of cognition and regulation of cognition. Knowledge of cognition refers to one's knowledge about cognition in general and their own cognition whereas regulation of cognition refers to metacognitive activities of individuals they use to regulate cognition and control their own learning and thinking (Schraw & Moshman, 1995). Regarding the relationship between metacognition and NOS understanding, Peters and Kitsantas (2010) claimed that the development of level of metacognition was effective in increasing students’ understanding of NOS understanding. Moreover, Abd-El-Khalick and Akerson (2009) concluded that development of more informed understandings of NOS is related to higher levels of metacognitive awareness. As these studies revealed it can be concluded that the development of metacognition was effective in increasing students’ NOS understanding. Therefore, it can be inferred that learners with a high metacognitive awareness might develop a better understanding of NOS. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether there was an association between pre-service science teachers’ (PSTs) understanding of NOS and their metacognitive awareness levels. The specific research question guided to this study was: Do PSTs with different levels of NOS understanding differ in terms of their metacognitive awareness levels? 

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