Abstract

The Nature of Science (NOS) and Scientific Process Skills (SPS) are central components of science education, as they play a crucial role in fostering students’ scientific reasoning, inquiry competence, and understanding of how scientific knowledge is constructed. This study aimed to investigate the effects of NOS-based activities implemented in science classes on the development of fifth-grade students’ scientific process skills. The research employed a single-group pretest-posttest quasi-experimental design with fifth-grade students from a public school in Denizli/Beyağaç, Türkiye, over an eight-week period. The NOS activities were designed to introduce students to scientific processes, promote scientific thinking, and facilitate the integration of science into everyday life. Data were collected using the Basic Skills Scale and the Scientific Process Skills Evaluation Form (SPSEF). The analysis of the Basic Skills Scale indicated a significant improvement in posttest scores compared to pretest levels. In addition, the analysis of activity-based data collected through the SPSEF revealed improvements in higher-order skills, including problem identification, variable recognition, hypothesis formulation, experimental design, and data interpretation.

These findings suggest that integrating explicit-reflective NOS activities into science instruction can effectively support the development of both basic and emerging higher-order scientific process skills at early grade levels, while also enhancing students’ understanding of the epistemic nature of scientific knowledge.

Keywords: Science education, Science Process Skills (SPS), Nature of Science (NOS), 5th-grade students

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Copyright © 2026 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.

How to cite

Köseoğlu, E., & Can, B. (2026). The effect of the nature of science activities on 5th-grade students’ scientific process skills. Education and Science, 1-18. https://doi.org/10.15390/ES.2025.2506