Research of teachers' affective tendencies and manners towards teaching socioscientific issues

This study aimed to examine teachers' affective tendencies and manners towards teaching socioscientific issues (SSI). In the study, the affective tendencies and manners of teachers working in the branches of classroom, science and social studies regarding SSI teaching were evaluated in the context of gender, place, department and level of following scientific journals or publications. In addition, the relationship between affective tendency and manner towards SSI teaching was analyzed. The research was conducted in line with the data obtained with the participation of a total of 161 teachers (99 female, 62 male) working in primary and secondary school levels in the spring semester of the 2022-2023 academic year. The research was conducted with a descriptive approach based on quantitative methods and structured in a correlational survey model. Research of the dataset was obtained through the "Personal Information Form" prepared by the researcher, the "Attitude Scale Towards Socioscientific Issues" developed by Topçu (2010), and the "Affective Tendency Scale Towards Teaching Socioscientific Issues" developed by Sakmen and Genç (2021). The Manner Scale Towards Socioscientific Issues consists of 30 items in total and is structured in three sub-dimensions. The Affective Tendency Scale for Teaching Socioscientific Issues includes of 28 items grouped under 4 sub-dimensions. The findings related to the sub-problems of the research were presented using descriptive statistics. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov normality test was performed to determine whether the distribution of the data obtained from the manner scale and the affective tendency scale was normal or not. In addition, Skewness and Kurtosis values were calculated. Although the findings obtained from the tests did not fully support the normality hypothesis, the data were considered proper for parametric analysis because the skewness and kurtosis values were within acceptable ranges. In order to evaluate the significance of the difference between the mean scores obtained according to the gender variable, one of the parametric tests, the "Unrelated Samples t-Test", was used. "ANOVA (One-Way Analysis of Variance) Test" was used to analyze the interaction of independent variables and the effects of these interactions on dependent variables. "Pearson Correlation Analysis" was conducted to analyze the correlation between teachers' affective tendencies and manners towards teaching socio-scientific issues, the direction of the relationship, and the intensity of the relationship. In accordance with the analysis findings, a statistically significant difference was found in the attitude scores of teachers according to the gender variable; however, no significant difference was observed in the affective tendency scores. No significant difference was found between the place variable and the affective tendency and manner scores. Although there was no significant difference between the department variable and the affective tendency and manner scores, it was concluded that the self-efficacy perceptions of social studies teachers were higher than those of other departments. While there was a significant difference between the affective tendency scores and the variable of following scientific journals or publications, no significant difference was found in manner levels. In accordance with the findings, a positive and highly significant connection was determined between teachers' affective tendencies and manners towards SSI teaching. In particular, it has been observed that pedagogical content knowledge, perception of benefit and importance establish close and meaningful relationships with teachers' manners. Based on the data obtained from the research, teachers' affective tendencies and manners toward the Social Security Institution (SSI) influence each other in parallel. Therefore, it is recommended that socioscientific issues supporting pedagogical proficiency be included in teacher education and in-service education programs, that teachers be encouraged to follow scientific publications, and that examples of practice be shared and shared among teachers.