Investigating of pre-service science teachers? socio-scientific and scientific argumentation quality in terms of content knowledge level

In broad sense it is thought that comprehending scientific endeavor more clearly and being aware of scientific processes which are conducted aiming at producing scientific knowledge is a crucial component of scientific literacy. In recent years, involving in decision making processes actively and making decisions more correctly and rationally with regard to scientific and socio-scientific contents are increased the importance of the term of argumentation in the context of science education. Argumentation may be efficient in gaining comprehended knowledge and argumentative skills to make decisions more easily and healthily related to socio-scientific and scientific issues. Furthermore, discussion environments which are framed by teachers for their students have importance in the sense of quality science education.In consideration of valuable and crucial place of argumentation in science education, 54 pre-service science teachers who have enrolled in a state university in Western Black Sea Region were selected as the sample of current study.The general purpose of the current study is to investigate the assumed relationship between pre-service science teachers? content knowledge level and socio-scientific and scientific argumentation quality and if so; to reveal various reasons of mentioned relationship. Moreover sub-purposes of the current study are to introduce argumentative processes to pre-service science teachers through partaking them in argumentation processes and to enhance argumentation skills of pre-service science teachers? regarding both scientific and socio-scientific issues. In the light of the determined purposes of current study, Cloning Conception Understanding Test (CCUT) was administered to have an initial idea related to content knowledge level of PSTs. In addition to this; for prompting PSTs to generate scientific and socio-scientific argumentations,, pre-prepared scenarios regarding cloning were introduced to small discussion groups and then whole scenarios were implemented by small groups. Finally in the purpose of revealing the main reasons of the quantitative findings and results of the current study, four semi-structured interview questions were posed to individuals who were selected randomly from each small discussion group.Scientific and socio-scientific argumentations generated by PSTs were evaluated through a five levels methodological tool which was developed by Erduran, Simon and Osborne (2004). Hereby, determination of whether the significance of correlation between content knowledge level and argumentation quality was revealed through a non-parametric technique, Kruskal Wallis H-Test, and finally obtained data from semi-structured interviews conducted by PSTs were analyzed with inductive content analysis.Based on qualitative and quantitative analysis, in other words mixed type analysis, it can be asserted that there is no a significant influence of content knowledge level on quality of scientific and socio-scientific argumentations of PSTs?. Therefore, the content knowledge level of PSTs cannot be considered as the primary factor in terms of identifying scientific and socio-scientific argumentation quality level. In according to current study?s findings, it can be concluded that argumentation skills, personal experiences and interest of PSTs? to discussing content and also similar factors may be considered as effective aspects in order to determine quality of scientific and socio-scientific argumentation.