Informal Reasoning Quality and Misconceptions in Middle School Students’ Engagement with Socioscientific Issues

Date

2025-08-25

Author

Piri, Zeynep
Yılmaz Tüzün, Özgül

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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The present study aims to explore middle school (8th grade) students’ informal reasoning quality and misconceptions about socioscientific issues. Correlational research approach was used. The sample constituted 549 8th grade students in public schools and was selected by purposeful and convenient sampling methods. Data were collected using multiple instruments: Issue Familiarity Form focusing on global warming, Socioscientific Issues Concept Test for global warming, energy sources, cloning, genetic engineering, Informal Reasoning on Socioscientific Issues Questionnaire focusing on global warming. Descriptive statistics showed that students tended to view teacher as their primary source of information about global warming, they were good at creating supportive argument while tended to struggling creating counter argument and rebuttal, and often framed their arguments from an ecological perspective. Their overall concept knowledge of SSI was moderate, with the most common misconceptions were found related to energy sources and global warming. Multiple regression analysis indicated that students' informal reasoning quality predicted by their concept knowledge about global warming. To improve students’ understanding about SSI, students need to be encouraged to communicate scientific knowledge through argumentation and explicitly discuss the nature of scientific knowledge together with how it has been generated by scientists.

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/115833

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Department of Mathematics and Science Education, Conference / Seminar