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This study is a qualitative study conducted to examine the effect of socioscientific issues (SSI) on discourse patterns used in the classroom. The research was conducted with four elementary science teachers working in a public school. The research was designed as case studies of these four teachers and data resources were video recordings of these teachers' routine and SSI based lessons. The data was analyzed through discourse analysis. The discourse patterns used by teachers were examined in terms of adjacent the utterance, triadic, and chain discourse patterns. The results indicated that the discourse patterns used by the teachers in their routine lessons changed dramatically in the context of SSI and the chain discourse pattern came to the fore in the courses processed in the context of the SSI.

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to the closure of schools in Turkey and the online delivery of education through digital tools. The aim of the study is to reveal the experiences and opinions of high school students in the emergency remote teaching process. In this sense, data was collected with semi-structured interview form with 25 high school students. The data obtained within the scope of the study were analyzed by content analysis method. The results show that student experiences are shaped around four dimensions as a learning environment, affective, technological literacy and teaching-learning process. In general, it shows that students have difficulties in integrating into the new learning environment. In order not to experience similar problems in the future emergency remote teaching process and to integrate more effectively, a systematically and effectively planned distance learning system should be designed, and the necessary trainings should be provided for educators to master online pedagogy.

The world has been fighting with the novel COVID-19 pandemic, which has scientific, societal, and ethical components, and thus it can be classified as one of the most challenging socio-scientific issues (SSI) of our era. The pandemic required individuals to make decisions on a variety of issues, and these decision-making processes are highly related to informal reasoning and individuals' scientific literacy (SL). Thus, this paper aims to investigate the N = 26 pre-service biology teachers' informal reasoning and decision-making modes within the real-time and dynamic COVID-19 pandemic context. The present study revealed that most of the participants made rationalistic based decisions about COVID-19 and social isolation. Moral-based decision-making, which is second-highest frequency among all decision-making modes, is also specific to COVID-19 and social isolation. Furthermore, the participants utilized different arguments while self-reasoning on the issue and convincing someone of their ideas about social isolation and COVID-19.

Many scholars and science curricula from around the world describe socioscientific issues (SSIs) as meaningful contexts for teaching about the nature of science (NOS). These calls are guided by the assumption that science teachers are able to identify relevant aspects of the NOS in a given SSI and to decide how to utilize these for NOS instruction. To this end, this study aimed to assess a group of science teachers' competencies in identifying aspects of the NOS in various educational critical scenarios (ECS) featuring different SSI. 15 science teachers' understandings of the NOS were assessed through interviews and their competence in identifying aspects of the NOS in given ECSs was addressed through an open-ended questionnaire. The results indicated that, although all of the participants had informed views regarding the majority of the aspects of the NOS, the majority of them failed to transfer this knowledge and could not exhibit similar competence in identifying some aspects of NOS in ECSs. This implies that having an informed understanding of the NOS does not guarantee effective translation of this understanding into the classrooms.

Although understandings of scientific inquiry (as opposed to conducting inquiry) are included in science education reform documents around the world, little is known about what students have learned about inquiry during their elementary school years. This is partially due to the lack of any assessment instrument to measure understandings about scientific inquiry. However, a valid and reliable assessment has recently been developed and published, Views About Scientific Inquiry (VASI; Lederman et al. [2014], Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 51, 65-83). The purpose of this large-scale international project was to collect the first baseline data on what beginning middle school students have learned about scientific inquiry during their elementary school years. Eighteen countries/regions spanning six continents including 2,634 students participated in the study. The participating countries/regions were: Australia, Brazil, Chile, Egypt, England, Finland, France, Germany, Israel, Mainland China, New Zealand, Nigeria, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Turkey, and the United States. In many countries, science is not formally taught until middle school, which is the rationale for choosing seventh grade students for this investigation. This baseline data will simultaneously provide information on what, if anything, students learn about inquiry in elementary school, as well as their beginning knowledge as they enter secondary school. It is important to note that collecting data from all of the approximately 200 countries globally was not humanly possible, and it was also not possible to collect data from every region of each country. The results overwhelmingly show that students around the world at the beginning of grade seven have very little understandings about scientific inquiry. Some countries do show reasonable understandings in certain aspects but the overall picture of understandings of scientific inquiry is not what is hoped for after completing 6 years of elementary education in any country.

The COVID-19 pandemic has become one of the most controversial issues in recent years. The pandemic’s impact on argumentation skills, crucial for science teachers, needs exploration to understand its effects on how they evaluate evidence and engage in discussions. This study investigated how biology pre-service teachers’ (PSTs) argumentation quality changed over the pandemic’s first two months of social distancing and quarantine. Using qualitative and quantitative methodologies, data were collected through semi-structured interviews, and Toulmin’s Argument Pattern (TAP) was employed to evaluate the arguments. Initially, nearly half of the participants demonstrated low-level arguments. However, during the second round of interviews, a decrease in Level 1 and 2 arguments and an increase in Level 3 arguments were observed. The observed improvements in argumentation quality, particularly in the use of counterclaims, warrants, and rebuttals, underscore the role of increased familiarity with the issue and exposure to diverse information sources. These findings suggest that real-life contexts, such as the pandemic, offer opportunities for PSTs to develop more sophisticated argumentation skills when exposed to multiple perspectives and ongoing engagement with the topic. Understanding these changes can inform teaching strategies and teacher training programmes, especially during global crises. Future research could examine argumentation quality related to issues such as vaccination and COVID-19 variants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]