Abstract
In order to assess lower secondary school students' understanding of the tentativeness of scientific knowledge by using the revised NSKS, the following survey was carried out. The survey asked the following questions. (1) Are there any differences among subjects' grades in mode of each statement comprising the subscales below ? (2) Which statements did lower secondary school students misunderstand ? Method : The revised NSKS was administered to 451 lower secondary school students. The instrument contains 24 statements with a Likert scale response format with five choices : strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, strongly disagree. The subscales consisted of the following : creative, developmental, parsimonious, and testable. 451 students comprised the sample. The sample consisted of three grades. Each mode of the statements was used to identify whether lower secondary school students understood it or not. Results : The results of the present survey are summarized as follows: (1) There was no differences among subjects' grades in mode of each statement comprising the subscales. (2) Lower secondary school students misunderstood two statements below. 1. Scientific laws and theories do not express the creativity. 2. There is an effort in science to build as great a number of laws, theories as possible.
