GENERAL ARTICLES CURRENT SCIENCE, VOL. 119, NO. 1, 10 JULY 2020 26 Rohini Karandikar is in the Curiosity Gym, 6, Singh Road, Fort, Mum- bai 400 001, India; Aniket Sule is in the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, TIFR, Mankhurd, Mumbai 400 088, India. *For correspondence. (e-mail: anikets@hbcse.tifr.res.in) How practicing science teachers amalgamate their beliefs with science Rohini Karandikar and Aniket Sule* Science teachers shoulder a major responsibility of introducing students to the discipline, thereby shaping their ideas and developing scientific temper. However, little attention has been paid to determine if teachers have the requisite training to achieve this. The focus of the present study is to demonstrate how physics teachers form mental models to amalgamate pseudo-scientific beliefs related to the moon, eclipses and planets with curricular science. We show that teachers acknowl- edge the fact that their training in science is sometimes in contradiction with their experiences and religious/traditional beliefs. In such situations, they are likely to go by their religious beliefs over scientific training. We hope the present study will draw the attention of the curriculum developers on the need to engage teachers in order to impart the correct ideas about the nature of science and scientific temper. Keywords: Religious beliefs, scientific temper, science teachers. INDIA is a country where several superstitions are largely propagated around astronomical events by political lead- ers or self-proclaimed godmen. When such ideas are circulated through media, they are likely to be accepted by the public. This jeopardizes the scientific temper of the society, to the extent of modifying school textbooks. The term ‘scientific temper’ is contemporary 1 . Many rational thinkers, including Jawaharlal Nehru 2 have defined it in their own words. If we take a common essence of all the definitions, we can paraphrase it as a way of life which expects us to accept any new idea strictly based on reasoning and evidence. A statement on scientific temper released in 1981 sheds light on the national scenario back then, with myths created about our past, astrology, palmistry, food fads and irrational health practices 3 . Four decades later, we are still battling the rise and havoc of pseudo-science in the country. On the same lines as the statement 3 , the position paper on teaching of science of the National Curriculum Framework mentions one of the aims of science education as to enable the learner to ‘cultivate scientific temper – objectivity, criti- cal thinking and freedom from fear and prejudice’ 4 . Whether the content of the textbooks is in line with this spirit of scientific temper still remains a question. Several concepts in the curriculum can be aligned with scientific temper, e.g. planetary motions, phases of the moon, eclipses, etc. Astronomy is a topic which gathers tre- mendous public attention and sparks curiosity. In most of the undergraduate courses, astronomy is not a compul- sory course, but is usually offered as an elective 5 . In India, astronomy does find a place in geography and science up to class XII, but few universities have made it a part of their curriculum for undergraduate physics courses. Teachers’ experiences, beliefs and understanding of astronomy in Indian classrooms are not studied, barring a few exceptions 6,7 . A large number of studies world over have reported on the understanding of planetary motions, phases of the moon, eclipses, etc. among learners as well as the general public. Misconceptions regarding these topics lead to false beliefs and hence impact the scientific temper. For example, Treagust and Smith 8 were among the first to study students’ understanding of gravity and motion of planets. Vosniadou and Brewer 9 studied the first to fifth grade students’ knowledge of the earth. Reiss 10 wrote a comprehensive review on the role of religion in a science classroom. Even in India, we see examples of studies tar- geting students, teachers or the general public to probe their ideas regarding phases of the moon 11 , shape of the earth 12 , interrelation between science and religion 13 , and conflicts that teachers experience when certain aspects of science contradict religious ideas 14 . Shulman 15 emphasized the need to think about the source of teachers’ explanations and their sources of analogies, metaphors and examples. As analogies or metaphors often connect concepts with everyday life, a wrong analogy or metaphor could easily lead to a mis- conception or false belief. Trundle et al. 16 discussed in detail the moon-phase conceptions among teachers. The authors emphasized that teachers and educators shoulder the responsibility of developing a scientifically literate