Pre-Service Primary Teachers Develop Teaching Artifacts on Contemporary Socioscientific Issues

ABSTRACT

Recently, there has been an increased interest in how science and society interrelation is presented and discussed in science courses. Socioscientific issues (SSI) approach is one way of promoting teaching and learning of science through social contexts. In the present study, we focus on the artifacts 12 pre-service primary teachers (PPTs) developed as teaching material for the negotiation of contemporary SSIs during a 12-week university course. Data was collected through the final artifacts, audiotapes of all the class sessions and a final semi-structured interview. The analysis was oriented to the social aspects of science as described by the Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) Framework, which is a novel European Union policy aiming at bridging the gap between science and society. The findings reveal that PPTs focus on the scientific content and the ethical aspects of the contemporary topics they were engaged with. Risk-benefit and ethical analysis were the dominant teaching practices employed by PPTs. Insights into PPTs difficulties concerning the scientific content and the social aspects of science are also discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Pre-service teachers
• primary education
• socioscientific issues
• teaching artifacts

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The research work was supported by the Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation (HFRI) under the HFRI PhD Fellowship grant (Fellowship Number: 1490).