Examination of attitudes and opinions of primary school teacher candidates towards socioscientific issues

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the attitudes and views of primary school teacher candidates towards socioscientific issues. This research utilized the scanning model and used the Attitude Scale towards Socioscientific Issues as well as an open-ended questionnaire to obtain data on views about how socioscientific issues should be dealt with in science lessons. The research was conducted by 163 students at Kütahya Dumlupinar University, Faculty of Education, Department of Primary School Education. In addition to percentage, arithmetic mean, frequency and unrelated samples t-tests for correlation between different groups, a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was implemented for data analysis. The open-ended questionnaire of the study was analyzed using thematic analysis. Based on the findings of the research, it was determined that teacher candidates enjoyed socioscientific subjects to a moderate extent. Moreover, it was found that there was a significant difference between opinions about socioscientific issues among research participants in terms of grade, following media resources related to socioscientific issues, and reading additional resources about socioscientific issues. As a result of the analysis of the participants' opinions, the main theme was determined to be raising science-literate individuals, because gaining cognitive skills, teaching the mutual connection between Science-Technology-Society, supporting effective development, and developing social skills are all associated with the characteristics of science-literate individuals in the literature.