Exploring science teachers’ beliefs and epistemic knowledge of scientific explanation

The current practice turn in science education emphasises that students should engage in disciplinary practices to develop content, procedural, and epistemic knowledge. One key practice is constructing explanations for natural phenomena, understood here as a reasoned account that integrates theoretical knowledge with the interpretation of empirical evidence to make sense of a phenomenon. Effective guidance in this practice requires teachers to understand both the nature and purpose of scientific explanations. This qualitative multi-case study examines the views of five secondary science teachers using classroom observations, field notes, and semi-structured interviews analysed through thematic and constant comparative methods. Findings show that teachers held multiple, overlapping meanings of the verb explain, which were introduced ambiguously in classroom practice. When probed, participants did not articulate a clear epistemic characterisation of scientific explanations and did not view students’ competence in constructing explanations as a central learning goal, despite acknowledging its importance for scientists. These results reveal a gap between disciplinary expectations and classroom practice and suggest a need for professional development that explicitly addresses these conceptual ambiguities.