What is the Nature of Science?

By A.A. Carin|J.E. Bass|T.L. Contant

For children, an important part of learning science is learning about its nature (American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1993, pp. 3–7). Simply, science is an attempt to understand the world by

questioning, investigating, and observing what happens;
trying to make sense of our observations;
using our new knowledge to make predictions about what might happen in the future; and
testing our predictions to see if our understanding is correct (Paulu & Martin, 1991).

Doing science can be as simple as one individual conducting field studies or as complex as hundreds of people across the world working on a major scientific problem. Whatever the circumstances or level of complexity, scientists are likely to work from some common assumptions, have some common goals, and use some common procedures.

Teaching Science as Inquiry
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Excerpt from Teaching Science as Inquiry, by A.A. Carin, J.E. Bass, T.L. Contant, 2005 edition, p. 8.

© ______ 2005, Allyn & Bacon, an imprint of Pearson Education Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The reproduction, duplication, or distribution of this material by any means including but not limited to email and blogs is strictly prohibited without the explicit permission of the publisher.

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