ABSTRACT

The low literacy skills of Indonesian students achieved by the OECD through the PISA study from 2000-2015, need to find a way of solving it well and comprehensively. The main element of science literacy is to understand what science is, how it works and how it is summed up in the concept of nature of science (NOS). NOS is a fusion of four areas of science studies, namely the history of science, sociological science, philosophical science and psychological science that can be applied holistically, so by building the concept of NOS can be used as a solution in overcoming the low ability of students' science literacy. The students' ability in science literacy will be influenced by the teachers’ way teach science and the ability of teachers to teach science to be influenced by the extent to which the teacher understands the nature of science and technology (NOST). This matter will give consequences in preparing pre-service science teachers, where in the process, science teachers must not only master the concept of the science, but also have to master the philosophical and epistemological views of the concept of science.. This research was conducted to explore the knowledge of pre-service chemistry teacher on the nature of science and technology (NOST). The results of the research will be used as a basis for learning at universities in the framework of pre-service chemistry teachers.

This research uses descriptive method, involving 53 pre-service chemistry teacher students from population 103 pre-service chemistry teacher students of one State University in West Nusa Tenggara Province, Indonesia. This study uses the VNOST questionnaire instrument that is arranged epistemologically, to explore information about the understanding of pre-service chemistry teacher toward NOST. The result of this questionaire is then presented in percentage form. Then the results of these percentages are analyzed descriptively statistically, which is used to analyze the data by describing the collected data.

The results obtained from this study reveal that as many as 60.4% of pre-service teacher students assume that science is the knowledge used to explain the world around humans, so that science assumes the principles, laws and theories in explaining a phenomenon, as many as 45.3% the purpose of science is to understand, explain and interpret natural phenomena that occur, and 49.1% pre-service teacher students assume that scientific research is conducted to reveal the explanation of the existing phenomenon. In addition, with regard to the origin of scientific knowledge, as many as 49.1% of pre-service teacher students assume that scientific knowledge is the result of past scientists' ideas and ideas that are developed to become known scientific knowledge today. In terms of students' understanding of the nature of technology, 41.5% of pre-service teacher students consider that technology is the application of science to improve life and assume that developing science and technology is what is done to meet the needs of human life, but on the other hand the development of science and the technology will affect the lifestyle of the man himself.

 

In general, pre-service teacher students have the same view of science and technology, that science is a science of nature, while technology is the application of science. Based on these results it is necessary that there is a program of renewal of learning and media used to develop the ability of NOST of pre-service chemistry teachers.

 

Keywords: Pre-service teacher , Questionaire, Science, Technology,  VNOST

Acknowledgment: I would like to express my special thanks of gratitude to head of chemistry education department, Mataram University, Mr. Aliefman Hakim, who gave me the opportunity to do this study in his institution, and pre-service teachers’ students in mataram university that also helped me as respondents and my special thanks of gratitude to lecturers in Indonesia University of Education that support me to finished this study.