Preservice Science Teachers' Epistemological Beliefs and Informal Reasoning Regarding Socioscientific Issues

Date

2017-12-01

Author

Ozturk, Nilay
Yılmaz Tüzün, Özgül

Metadata

Show full item record

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

Item Usage Stats

326
views

0
downloads

This study investigated preservice elementary science teachers' (PSTs) informal reasoning regarding socioscientific issues (SSI), their epistemological beliefs, and the relationship between informal reasoning and epistemological beliefs. From several SSIs, nuclear power usage was selected for this study. A total of 647 Turkish PSTs enrolled in three large universities in Turkey completed the open-ended questionnaire, which assessed the participants' informal reasoning about the target SSI, and Schommer's (1990) Epistemological Questionnaire. The participants' epistemological beliefs were assessed quantitatively and their informal reasoning was assessed both qualitatively and quantitatively. The findings revealed that PSTs preferred to generate evidence-based arguments rather than intuitive-based arguments; however, they failed to generate quality evidence and present different types of evidence to support their claims. Furthermore, among the reasoning quality indicators, PSTs mostly generated supportive argument construction. Regarding the use of reasoning modes, types of risk arguments and political-oriented arguments emerged as the new reasoning modes. The study demonstrated that the PSTs had different epistemological beliefs in terms of innate ability, omniscient authority, certain knowledge, and quick learning. Correlational analyses revealed that there was a strong negative correlation between the PSTs' certain knowledge and counterargument construction, and there were negative correlations between the PSTs' innate ability, certain knowledge, and quick learning dimensions of epistemological beliefs and their total argument construction. This study has implications for both science teacher education and the practice of science education. For example, PST teacher education programs should give sufficient importance to training teachers that are skillful and knowledgeable regarding SSIs. To achieve this, specific SSI-related courses should form part of science teacher education programs.

Subject Keywords

Socioscientific issues, Informal reasoning, Epistemological beliefs, Preservice teacher

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/34277

Journal

RESEARCH IN SCIENCE EDUCATION

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11165-016-9548-4

Collections

Department of Mathematics and Science Education, Article

Suggestions

OpenMETU
Core

Preservice science teacher's efficacy beliefs regarding science teaching and their classroom management beliefs Savran, Ayşe; Çakıroğlu, Jale Us; Department of Secondary Science and Mathematics Education (2002) This study intended to explore preservice science teachers' science teaching efficacy beliefs and their classroom management beliefs. In addition, preservice science teachers' efficacy and classroom management beliefs were compared regarding gender, and grade level. Also, the intenelationships among their efficacy beliefs, classroom management beliefs, the number of university pedagogical courses completed and university cumulative point grade average (CGPA) were investigated. The present study was conducte...
Preservice Science Teachers' Informal Reasoning about Socioscientific Issues: The influence of issue context TOPÇU, MUSTAFA SAMİ; Sadler, Troy D.; Yılmaz Tüzün, Özgül (2010-01-01) The purpose of the current study is to explicitly test the extent to which issue contexts affect the informal reasoning processes engaged in by individuals. In order to address the research question framing this study, we engaged 39 Turkish preservice science teachers (PSTs) in interviews designed to elicit argumentation related to multiple socioscientific scenarios. Three scenarios related to gene therapy, another three related to human cloning, and the final scenario related to global warming. The data we...
Preservice Science Teachers' Beliefs about Application of Science Process Skills: A Case Study Yılmaz Tüzün, Özgül (2012-04-01) The purpose of this study was to investigate preservice science teachers' (PSTs) beliefs about scientific process skills (SPS) and application of SPS during microteaching session. A case study approach was used. Participants were elementary PSTs enrolled in the practice teaching in elementary education course. Findings revealed that PSTs were not proficient in teaching SPS to students, however, their beliefs about SPS were found as satisfactory. After examining 200 lesson plans, it was observed that 77 of t...
Factors Influencing Pre-Service Early Childhood Teachers' Outcome Expectancy Beliefs Regarding Science Teaching Olgan, Refika; Öztekin, Ceren (2014-04-01) This study investigated the contribution of scientific epistemological beliefs, personal self-efficacy beliefs, and attitudes towards science teaching on pre-service early childhood teachers' outcome expectancy beliefs. Data were collected from 362 pre-service early childhood teachers through administration of the Epistemological Beliefs Questionnaire, the Science Teaching Efficacy Belief Instrument and the Science Teaching Attitude Scale and were analyzed by using Multiple Regression analysis. The results ...
Middle Scool Students' Informal Reasoning Quality, Attitudes Towards Socioscientific Issues and Motivation to Learn Science Manay, Büşra; Yılmaz Tüzün, Özgül; Department of Secondary Science and Mathematics Education (2022-12-2) The aim of the present study was investigating the relationship between students’ informal reasoning quality regarding socio-scientific issues (SSI), attitudes toward SSI and their motivation to learn science. Data were obtained by using Informal Reasoning on SSI questionnaire, Pupils’ Attitudes Towards Socio-scientific Issues (PASSI) and Students’ Motivation toward Science Learning (SMTSL). The participants were 523 middle school students in 7th and 8th grades in Artuklu district of Mardin. Correlational ...

Citation Formats

N. Ozturk and Ö. Yılmaz Tüzün, “Preservice Science Teachers’ Epistemological Beliefs and Informal Reasoning Regarding Socioscientific Issues,” RESEARCH IN SCIENCE EDUCATION, pp. 1275–1304, 2017, Accessed: 00, 2020. [Online]. Available: https://hdl.handle.net/11511/34277.