Developing science teachers' scientific reasoning skills and its effects to classroom environment

Understanding of education in most countries involving our nation supports the learning environments in which students participate in the process actively. In this context, designing more effective learning environments is needed and great responsibilities fall to teachers as practitioners of new methods in the classrooms. However, in order to educate students as needed, firstly teachers should adopt these developments, aware of new instructional methods and have these skills which they intend to develop in the students. In order to promote students' scientific reasoning skills, the aim of this study is to develop science teachers' scientific reasoning skills and self-efficacy perceptions towards scientific reasoning skills and acquire proficiency about designing learning environments based on these skills to them through the Scientific Reasoning Skills Training Program (SRSTP) which will be developed according to teachers' needs. Multiple stage design which is a type of mixed method design was used in the study. The first part of the study which aims to determine the teachers' needs in the context of SRSTP is a descriptive research based on survey method. The participants of this part which the data were collected via "Identifying Needs Survey" were 32 in-service science teachers working at state middle schools with different socio-economic status in one of the central district of İzmir. Although the second part of the study adopted one group pre test and post test design, it was also based on a convergent parallel mixed methods design which qualitative and quantitative data for same variable were collected at the same time. In this stage, qualitative data were collected via "Scientific Reasoning Skills Evaluaiton Form" and "Self-Efficacy Perceptions towards Scientific Reasoning Skills Assessment Form" and quantitative data were collected via "Scientific Reasoning Skills Test towards In-service and Pre-service Science Teachers" and "Self-Efficacy Perceptions Towards Scientific Reasoning Skills Scale". The participants of this part were 45 in-service science teachers working at state and private middle schools and determined by purposeful sampling from seven geographical regions. The third part of the study which aims to assess the training program is a case study which both qualitative and quantitative data collection tools were used. The participants of this part were the in-service science teacher who participated in the SRSTP and showed volunteerism to continue the study and his 31 students studying at 5th grade. In this stage, "Force and Motion Unit Scientific Reasoning Skills Test" and "Scientific Reasoning Skills Teaching Observation Form" were used as data collection tools. Findings from the first part of the study revealed that teachers associated scientific reasoning skills with science process skills mostly, some of teachers couldn't make an explanation about how the scientific reasoning skills take place in the curriculum, some of them couldn't teach scientific reasoning skills due to his/her own feeling of inadequacy and for achieving this, a major part of these teachers need factors related to their own such as a training about scientific reasoning skills, collegiality etc and external factors such as adequate experiment equipment, classroom size etc. Findings from the second part of the study showed that after the training teachers' scores of Scientific Reasoning Skills Test towards In-service and Pre-service Science Teachers, Scientific Reasoning Skills Evaluaiton Form and Self-Efficacy Perceptions towards Scientific Reasoning Skills Scale were significantly increased. Furthermore findings also pointed out that, after the training teachers opinions' about factors seen as important for the development of students' scientific reasoning skills tended from students to their own and their thinking of inadequacy about teaching scientific reasoning skills evolved into thinking of adequacy about teaching these skills. Findings from the third part of the study indicated that trained teacher showed minimum %29,16 and maximum %61,06 success about designing scientific reasoning skills based learning environment and also there was a significant difference between students' pre and post test scores in support of posttest of Force and Motion Unit Scientific Reasoning Skills Test. Based on these findings, it is possible to say that developed SRSTP can be implemented to science teachers for developing their students' scientific reasoning skills. When considering the vision of Turkish Science Curriculum, the emphasis on 21st century skills seen as important for high quality and productive future and teachers' dominant roles for including the new methods in the classrooms, it was thought that this study may be a candidate to fill an important gap in the literature.