Preservice Science Teachers' Informal Reasoning about Socioscientific Issues: The influence of issue context

Date

2010-01-01

Author

TOPÇU, MUSTAFA SAMİ
Sadler, Troy D.
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

62
views

0
downloads

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 were analyzed using an interpretive qualitative research approach. Our work builds on a framework initially proposed by Toulmin in 1958. This study has provided new evidence related to informal reasoning in the context of socioscientific issues (SSI). At the sample level, there was strong consistency in informal reasoning quality among varying socioscientific scenarios. However, finer-grained analyses indicated a greater level of variability in the informal reasoning practices of individual PSTs. These results support previous conclusions that suggest context dependence for informal reasoning related to SSI. This study provides an initial picture of the reasoning practices of preservice teachers as opposed to science learners. The results indicate that teachers, at least those in this Turkish setting, would benefit from learning experiences that support their own informal reasoning practices as well as their ability to foster development of these practices among their students. We encourage the field to continue the investigation of SSI as contexts for education particularly as it relates to the education of teachers.

Subject Keywords

Argumentation, Informal reasoning, Preservice science teachers, Qualitative research, Reasoning, Socioscientific issue context

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/36206

Journal

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SCIENCE EDUCATION

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1080/09500690903524779

Collections

Department of Mathematics and Science Education, Article

Suggestions

OpenMETU
Core

Preservice science teachers (PSTs) informal reasoning characteristics regarding socioscientific issues: The relationship between informal reasoning patterns and quality Topçu, Mustafa Sami; Yılmaz Tüzün, Özgül; Sadler, Troy D. (null; 2009-08-31) 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' Epistemological Beliefs and Informal Reasoning Regarding Socioscientific Issues Ozturk, Nilay; Yılmaz Tüzün, Özgül (2017-12-01) 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 (1...
The relationship between eighth grade students' nature of science understanding and their informal reasoning on socioscientific issues Irmak, Nesibe Fatıma Nur; Yılmaz Tüzün, Özgül; Çakıroğlu, Jale; Department of Secondary Science and Mathematics Education (2021-8-02) The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between eighth grade students’ nature of science understanding and their informal reasoning on socioscientific issues. The study was performed with 414 8th grade middle school students in four different public middle schools of Turkey in Ankara, Altındağ. In the present study, correlational research approach was used. Background information about participants was collected by personal information questionnaire. The participants’ nature of science (NO...
A discussion of the concepts of validity and reliability in qualitative and quantitative Research Sadık, Olgun (2019-06-01) : The purpose of this paper is discussing the main issues in conceptualizing reliability and validity between qualitative and quantitative research approaches. The researcher examined the arguments about validity and reliability in inquiry methodology and identified three main debates primarily in qualitative research. The first one was about qualitative inquirers’ limited emphasis on the data collection process to increase the robustness of their research efforts. Most of the strategies in qualitative rese...
Preservice science teachers’ informal reasoning regarding socioscientific issues and the factors influencing their informal reasoning Topçu, Mustafa Sami; Yılmaz Tüzün, Özgül; Department of Educational Sciences (2008) The main purpose of this study was to explore Preservice Science Teachers’ (PSTs) informal reasoning regarding socioscientific issues (SSI). The study first investigated PSTs’ informal reasoning patterns; second, explored the relationship between informal reasoning patterns and quality; third, examined the variation of informal reasoning quality with SSI; at last, focused on the factors influencing PSTs’ informal reasoning in the context of SSI. Totally, 39 PSTs voluntarily participated in the study. Senior...

Citation Formats

M. S. TOPÇU, T. D. Sadler, and Ö. Yılmaz Tüzün, “Preservice Science Teachers’ Informal Reasoning about Socioscientific Issues: The influence of issue context,” INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SCIENCE EDUCATION, pp. 2475–2495, 2010, Accessed: 00, 2020. [Online]. Available: https://hdl.handle.net/11511/36206.