Scale development study for teaching socioscientific issues

This study has two objectives. One of the aims of the study is to develop a scale that determines affective tendencies towards the teaching of socioscientific issues. Another goal is to investigate the affective tendencies of candidates for science teachers related to the teaching of socioscientific issues with the developed scale and the variables that can affect these trends. The research working group consists of a total of 748 science teacher candidates, 126 men and 622 women, who study in the educational faculties of 9 different universities in Turkey during the 2019-2020 academic year. In this study quantitative-based cross-sectional survey design is used. During the item generation of scale items, the relevant theoretical framework is used and the opinions of field experts and science teachers have been benefitted. First version of the test was administered to teacher candidate and obtained data is analyzed by using an explanatory and confirmatory factor analysis. SPSS package program software used for the data analysis. As a result of the analyses, a scale consisted of and 28 items with 4 factors develope. In addition, the data obtained examined the relationship between the affective tendencies of teacher candidates for teaching socioscientific issues and the variables determined. Results of this study indicated that candidates views on teaching socioscientific issues was differed significantly in favor of women according to the gender variable. Only a significant difference was found in the lower self-sufficiency dimension compared to class level and parental income level variables. According to the analysis, no significant differences were found according to the level of education of parents and location variables. It was found that there were significant differences in the analysis conducted according to the university variable observed in education. The developed scale can be used in future studies to investidte, affective tendencies of science and social studies, biology, and primary school teachers working at all educational levels can be investigated for the teaching of socioscientific issues.