The investigation of informal reasoning in proximal and distal contexts of socio-scientific issues

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate pre-service science teachers (PSTs) informal reasoning, the factors considered by PSTs and the utilization of the nature of science (NOS) understanding in two contexts of socio-scientific issues (SSI): proximal (Use of Processed Foods in Turkey) and distal (Production and Use of Golden Rice in Vietnam). Nineteen PSTs were selected purposefully. They participated in this multi case study and were individually asked to respond to the same interview questions about two SSI scenarios prepared to be paralleled to each other in terms of general theme, balanced evidence, and structure. Data was analyzed deductively by using three patterns (rationalistic, emotive, and intuitive) established by the (Zeidler & Sadler, 2005) to determine informal reasoning. Also, factors considered by PSTs in resolving the issues were categorized into five: health, economic, moral and ethical, personal, and environmental considerations. The utilization of four aspects of NOS understanding: risk analysis in science, social embeddedness of science, tentative and subjective nature of scientific knowledge were examined and specified as naive, mixed, and informed. Findings indicated that PSTs displayed more rationalistic thinking (logic-based) in resolving the issue in distal context of SSI while displaying more emotive (care -based) thinking in proximal one. Also, in distal context, PSTs used concerns written in the text while they used personal experiences in the proximal one. PSTs utilized more informed belief about four aspects of NOS understanding in distal context than in proximal one.This findings are discussed to have implications for preparing effective SSI cases to be used in classroom instruction.