Vol.:(0123456789) Science & Education https://doi.org/10.1007/s11191-022-00343-1 1 3 ARTICLE Investigating Elementary Teachers’ Views, Implementation, and Longitudinal Enactment of Nature of Science Instruction Hallie Edgerly 1  · Jerrid Kruse 2  · Jesse Wilcox 3 Accepted: 10 April 2022 © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V. 2022 Abstract During a 10-week professional physical science professional development (PD) course, elementary inservice teachers (n = 18) in a large urban district were engaged in explicit- refective nature of science (NOS) instruction. Teachers were also explicitly engaged in refection concerning NOS pedagogy (e.g., explicit-refective, role of context). During the last 2 weeks of the PD course, teachers attempted to implement NOS instruction in their classrooms. Teachers submitted videos of their NOS teaching and written refections about their videos. Then, 7 months later, teacher participants (n = 14) submitted videos of their science teaching. During the PD course, most teachers were able to implement efective explicit-refective NOS instruction and their refections indicated strong agree- ment between participants’ NOS pedagogical content knowledge and their enacted NOS instruction. 7 months later, just over one-third of participants continued to include explicit- refective NOS instruction in their science teaching. NOS views, prior NOS pedagogical views, and prior NOS enactment did not account for longitudinal inclusion of efective NOS instruction. The role of teachers’ rationale for NOS and informal support networks are discussed. 1 Introduction and Background Nature of science (NOS) refers to issues such as what science is and how it works (Clough, 2006) as well as the values and assumptions scientists make as they develop their scientifc knowledge (Lederman, 1992). NOS is informed by the “history, philosophy, and sociol- ogy” of science (Clough, 2006, p. 463) and includes such issues as how scientists collabo- rate and the interaction of science with society. NOS has been identifed as a crucial part of scientifc literacy (American Association and for the Advancement of Sciences [AAAS], * Jesse Wilcox jwilcox.23@gmail.com Jerrid Kruse jerridkruse@gmail.com 1 Grand View University, Des Moines, IA, USA 2 Drake University, Des Moines, IA, USA 3 University of Northern Iowa, 097 McCollum Science Hall, Cedar Falls, IA 50614, USA