Student science teachers? ideas of about risks and benefits of nuclear energy effects the different sources of knowledge

Socioscientific Issues (SSI) gradually take huge places in the media and cause the debates among the public. These issues are the ones in which science interact with technology and society. The people make risk-benefit analysis in these issues. In addition, they are exposed to different knowledge sources and these sources affect their reasoning and decision making. In the present study, student science teachers?ideas about risks and benefits of nuclear energy, which was a socisocientific issue, were investigated and the effects of different knowledge sources on these ideas were scrutinized. First the interviews were conducted with the stakeholders of nuclear issue in Turkey who are the represantatives of Electricity Production Company (EPC) and Mersin Tema as well as a scientist from an independent university and another scientist who lead energy commission of an opposite party. A questionnaire (NERF1) including items about risks and benefits of nuclear energy was developed, using the transcripts of the interviews.NERF1 was administered to 222 student science teachers at Ahi Evran Universty. After about two months, NERF1 was administered again by adding the transcripts of different knowledge sources to the beginning of which. Therefore, the effect of different knowledge sources on perceptions of risk and benefit were tested, using affect heuristic theory. According to the results, in `high benefit? knowledge sources such as EPC and Universty-Scientist, risks got weaker, benefits got stronger, along with affect heuristic. However, affect heuristic did not work for `high risk? knowledge sources. In the case of Mersin Tema, both risks and benefits enhanced perhaps because the participants did not trusted this source as much as they trust on other sources. Regarding Opposite-scientist, there was no any significant difference for both risks and benefits. Even though this knowledge source found nuclear energy risky, he believed that nuclear plants should be built. Accordingly, we believe that different knowledge sources about SSI should be incorporated into science teacher education programmes and investigated in terms of the contents of risk and benefit before their usage. In addition, we believe that these types of knowledge sources have a potential to improve student teachers beliefs about nature of science since they include different ideologies, values and social aspects.Key words: socioscientific issues, nuclear energy, risk, benefit, affect heuristik, student science teacher.