New Perspectives in Science Education

Aim of science course is to introduce students themselves, their environment and provide them basic living and thinking skills. In this connection science course encounters students with problems related to their daily life, help them to realize and inquire these problems, provides possibilities for solution of these problems and support them in synchronization with environment. Therefore, general aims of science education curriculums are training self confident, cooperative, decisive students who have problem solving skills, inquiry learning skills, effective communication skills and sustainable development awareness. One of contemporary methods which would promote this ability is socio-scientific argumentation. Students will be able to introduce themselves in better way and participate in courses actively. Therefore, use of socio-scientific argumentation which includes social, economic, moral and scientific dimensions in it’s context would be effective.

Controversial nature of socio-scientific issues are related to uncertainity in several topics. Inevitable ethical issues and complexity exist in nature of socio-scientific issues. Therefore ideas of individuals might differ greatly. In this connection its thought that socio-scientific argumentation would improve students’ discussion and inquiry skills. One of the main components of Turkish science education program is socio-scientific argumentation. In addition, socio-scientific issues consist in textbooks. Therefore, science teachers should have a strong background about socio-scientific argumentation in order to use it in classroom and guide their students. What is more, considering that teachers train students who have knowledge about socio-scientific issues and aware of risk factors, they should be aware of socio-scientific issues themselves and graduate from teacher training institutes with proper background. In these terms, pre-service science teachers’ awareness about socio-scientific issues gain importance. Therefore, aim of this study is to examine pre-service science teachers’ views towards socio-scientific issues.

Survey method used in this research. Qualitative data will be gathered with semi-structured interview. Semi-structured interviews will be done with pre-service science teachers about socio-scientific issues. After interview, gathered data will be analyzed with content analysis.