The nature of science (NOS) is an essential component of students’ scientific literacy and the key competence required in the new science curriculum standards in China. This study aimed to investigate Chinese students’ NOS views and explore any potential differences among grade levels, gender, and parents’ occupations. An online questionnaire was conducted on 4492 students from Grades 1–9 in a metropolis area of Southwest China. The Students’ Ideas about Nature of Science questionnaire (Chen et al., Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 50, 408–430, 2013), which is a Chinese version of the Likert scale questionnaire developed based on students’ viewpoints, was used to examine students’ perspectives of NOS on the Subjective, Objective, and Science for All categories. Regarding the key findings, Chinese students’ views of NOS tended to be subjective and showed suboptimal self-efficacy for being scientists. Students’ agreement with NOS showed a decreasing trend as grade levels increased. And the decrease in students’ agreement with Subjective categories was not accompanied with an increase in agreement with Objective categories. Boys tended to be more subjective than girls, and stereotype that boys are better suited to be scientists existed among boys in Grades 1–9 and girls in middle school. Children whose parents’ occupations are not science-related showed stronger agreement on the NOS Objective categories than those whose are science-related. We discussed possible reasons for the above results and implications for science education.
