Pre-Service Primary School Teachers’ Application of the Features of the Nature of Science to Socioscientific

The purpose of this study is to determine which features of the nature of science pre-service primary school teachers refer to while making a decision on a socioscientific issue at the end of the explicit reflective nature of science education. For this purpose, an exploratory qualitative research design was used in the study. The research group comprised 77 pre-service primary school teachers in their third year of studies at a public university. The study was carried out within the scope of the “Science and Technology Teaching” course. As a data collection tool, the socioscientific scenario “Babies with Three Parents” was used. Content analysis and descriptive analysis were used to analyze the data. According to the findings of the study, pre-service primary school teachers have a good level of ability to use the features of the nature of science, the changeable nature of scientific knowledge, and the fact that it is based on observation and experimentation when deciding on a socioscientific issue. Furthermore, pre-service class teachers primarily used the subjectivity and creativity features of scientific knowledge as well as the features of observation.