Exploration of pre-service science teachers? levels of relating the scientific knowledge to their daily lives and factors influencing this ability

This study sets out to investigate the pre-service science teachers? who will educate tomorrow students and got adequate education, levels of relating scientific knowledge to their daily lives, and to determine the factors influencing their ability of doing this. Since it was not possible to access all pre-service science teachers, a sampling procedure was conducted through purposeful sampling. The target population of the study was all pre-service teachers at the fourth grade, who were enrolled at Turkish education faculties at the departments of primary science education. The sample consisted of 217 pre-service science teachers enrolled at science education departments of four universities, namely, Gazi, Middle East Technical University, Hacettepe and Sakarya.Both qualitative and quantitative research methods were used in the study. In terms of the quantitative methods, a descriptive approach was conducted through analyzing the data coming from the administration of a questionnaire called ?Science and Technology Use in the Daily Life?. As a qualitative approach, a case study was implemented where the data were collected through semi-structured interviews.Findings regarding the level of relating daily lives to the scientific knowledge revealed that pre-service teachers were considerably able to implement their physics knowledge in their daily lives. They were also able to implement their chemistry knowledge in their daily lives, but the level of this implementation was relatively lower than that of physics knowledge. In addition, pre-service teachers could implement their biology knowledge in their daily lives to a lesser extent, which was relatively lower than those of physics and chemistry.As of factors influencing pre-service science teachers? ability of relating their daily lives to scientific knowledge, it was found that the location of the faculty, physical conditions of the school, attitudes of the instructors, socio-cultural live and the language of instruction were all influential. In addition, pre-service teachers believed that course contents were insufficient and mostly theory-driven which lacked sufficient applications. Finally, the findings revealed that participants considered themselves as partially literate in terms of science and technology.