Analysis of the Informal Reasoning Modes of Preservice Primary Teachers When Arguing about a Socio-Scientific Issue on Nuclear Power during a Role Play

Abstract

The use of nuclear power is a socio-scientific issue that is controversial in many areas. Concerns of nuclear power touch on health effects, environmental impacts, employment concerns and energy supply; arguments both for and against it are easily generated. This paper examines the specific aspects addressed by preservice primary teachers in their arguments during their participation in a roleplaying activity on the SSI of nuclear power stations closures in Spain. This was done in order to better understand informal reasoning modes, as well as the possible effect of the roles defended and the design of the staging of the role play. To this end, the transcripts of four role plays were analysed. The data analysis was carried out by open coding, extracting different categories of analysis that were classified into three different informal reasoning modes: environmental, financial and social. The results showed that participants used more environmental-oriented arguments than financial and social ones. Differences in informal reasoning modes were found between some roles and between the two parts of the staging. Some educational implications of these results are discussed, such as providing more information to the participants before the roleplaying activity and emphasising the scaffolding of the social aspects when designing the role play.

Impacto de un debate sociocientífico en las habilidades argumentativas y en la toma de decisiones del profesorado de secundaria en formación inicial

“…Argumentar sobre problemas de la vida diaria implica procesos de razonamiento informal. Este razonamiento se aplica fuera de contextos formales, en los que los problemas no están bien definidos, las premisas pueden no estar explícitamente enunciadas y las conclusiones pueden no estar delimitadas (Wu, 2013;Cruz-Lorite et al, 2023). Diversos autores indican diferentes tipos de razonamiento informal según los dominios a los que se orientan los argumentos (p. e., científico-tecnológico, económico, social, etc.)…”

Strengthening the Tension of Socio-Scientific Issues Based Learning to Promoting Democratic Life : A Systematic Review

“…Related to SSI as a learning approach, several research finding show that SSI can improve student learning outcomes (increase students' understanding of scientific knowledge) (Chen & So, 2017;Lorite et al, 2023;Estigarribia et al, 2022;Karpudewan & Roth, 2016;Kolarova et al, 2013;Owens et al, 2020;Sadler et al, 2016;Wahono, Chang, et al, 2021;Wahono et al, 2021), the development of students' attitudes and motivation towards science (Bossér & Lindahl, 2020;Chang et al, 2013;Lindahl & Folkesson, 2016;Yahaya et al, 2016), related to epistemological beliefs (Baytelman et al, 2020;Chang et al, 2020;Eryasar & Kilinc, 2022;Hsu et al, 2014;Lin et al, 2020;Muis et al, 2021;Öztürk & Yilmaz-Tuzun, 2016;Zeidler et al, 2013), increasing students' understanding of the nature of science itself (Bilican, 2018;Christenson & Walan, 2023;Khishfe et al, 2017;Kutluca & Aydın, 2018), critical thinking (Gül & Akcay, 2020;Pratiwi et al, 2016;Solbes et al, 2018), argumentation (Anwar & Ali, 2020;Capkinoglu et al, 2020;Evagorou & Osborne, 2013;Grooms, 2020;Grooms et al, 2014;Jumadi et al, 2021;Khishfe, 2014;Kutluca & Aydin, 2016;…”