Preservice science teachers' informal reasoning modes and socioscientific reasoning competencies

The main purpose of this study was to examine preservice science teachers' informal reasoning modes and socioscientific reasoning competencies regarding hydraulic fracking and land management issues. Participants of the study were 46 preservice science teachers from different grade levels. In this descriptive design research, both qualitative and quantitative data were obtained. In order to reveal participants' informal reasoning modes, Open-Ended Questionnaire developed bu Wu and Tsai (2011) was used and the obtained data were analyzed by using Integrated Analytical Framework developed by Wu and Tsai (2011). Participants' socioscientific reasoning competencies were assessed through The Quantitative Assessment of SSR developed by Romine, Sadler, and Kinslow (2017). Findings of the study revealed that the participants generated different reasoning modes for both scenarios. For hydraulic fracking issue, the participants generated social, ecology, economy, risk and/or technology, risk and political oriented arguments while they generated social, ecology, economy and risk oriented arguments for the land management issue. For both scenarios, the most frequent reasoning mode was the ecology oriented arguments. Regarding socioscientific reasoning competencies, the participants scored highest on the complexity dimension for hydraulic fracking issue and on the multiple perspectives for land management issue. Moreover, the participants scored lowest on the inquiry dimension for both scenario. Considering the two scenarios, the participants displayed low level of competency for all the dimensions except for the multiple perspectives dimension. They displayed moderate level of competency for multiple perspectives dimension. Implications for teacher education and practice were provided.