Preservice biology teachers’ decision-making and informal reasoning about culture-based socioscientific issues

Preservice Elementary Teachers’ Socioscientific Reasoning During a Decision-Making Activity in the Context of COVID-19

“…The ability to make rational decisions on SSIs has become a central quality of responsible citizens in times of global crisis such as COVID-19. Given that teachers are the agents who enact the SSI-related activities in their classrooms, it is crucial for teacher educators to consider how to support science teachers' understandings of SSIs and SSI-related decisionmaking (Ladachart & Ladachart, 2021;Ozturk & Yilmaz-Tuzun, 2017;Topcu et al, 2010Topcu et al, , 2011. This is particularly so for elementary teachers, who are responsible for developing students' general abilities through civic, moral, and character education (Benninga, 1991).…”

“…Empirical studies that examined elementary school students' socioscientific reasoning have suggested the necessity of teachers' instructional support for constructing informed and reasoned decisions (Evagorou, 2011;Ozden, 2020). Acknowledging that teachers' understandings and beliefs about teaching SSI can be critical factors that determine whether and how they address SSIs in their classrooms (Lee & Witz, 2009), researchers have implemented SSI decision-making activities in the teacher education context to investigate how preservice elementary teachers design SSI lesson plans (e.g., Borgerding & Dagistan, 2018;Ladachart & Ladachart, 2021;Topcu et al, 2010). Although addressing SSIs in elementary school is central to cultivating responsible citizens from an early age (Evagorou & Mauriz, 2017;Ozden, 2020), evidence suggests that SSI instruction is often challenging for teachers, most notably due to the lack of subject matter knowledge and training required for teaching SSIs (Kinskey & Zeidler, 2021).…”

Preservice science teachers’ informal reasoning and scientific habits of mind: A case of hydroelectric power plants

“…Most studies have investigated school-age students' informal reasoning but research on preservice teachers' informal reasoning was relatively less studied. For instance, Ladachart and Ladachart (2021) investigated Thai preservice biology teachers' informal reasoning about two different culture-based SSI. They found that preservice teachers considered issues from different multiple perspective and their reasoning was differed based on the cultural and religious relevancy and the importance of the issue.…”

The Effect of Using Scientific Scenarios in Teaching Socioscientific Issues in Science Course on Students' Logical Thinking Skills

“…In this context, by including socioscientific issues, it is aimed to improve students' ability to question, reasoning (Kinslow et al, 2019), analyzesynthesize-evaluate (Drummond & Fischhoff, 2017), and understand the relationships between socioscientific issues (Owens et al, 2020). Learning environments in which science teaching is provided through socioscientific issues are related to students' knowledge of these subjects (Lewis & Leach, 2006), increase their knowledge of scientific content (Jho et al, 2014;Klosterman & Sadler, 2010), and improve decisionmaking skills (Dauer et al , 2017;Gutierez, 2015;Ladachart & Ladachart, 2021;Zo'bi, 2014), supports the development of higher-order thinking skills such as logical thinking (Cian, 2020;Zeidler et al, 2019) and encourages them to develop positive attitudes towards science (Pelch & McConnell, 2017;Sadler, 2009). In addition, socioscientific issues are seen as contexts that include the learning process that enables students to bridge social contexts through their school experiences (Sadler et al, 2017).…”