The effect of teaching socio-scientific issues through Socratic inquiry on BİLSEM students' critical thinking and problem-solving skills

The aim of this study is to investigate the effects of Socratic inquiry-based activities on BİLSEM students' critical thinking and problem-solving skills, and students' views on the Socratic inquiry workshop. The simple experimental design was adopted. The study was carried out according to the single-group pre-test post-test model. The research was carried out with 20 5th grade students enrolled in the Recognition of Individual Talents program in Alanya BİLSEM, affiliated to the Alanya District National Education Directorate, in the fall semester of the 2021-2022 academic year. Within the scope of the research, a Socratic inquiry workshop was applied to the students for 8 weeks, with six activities and four videos, two days a week (80+80 minutes). Before and after the application, TCT Critical Thinking Test developed by Bruce and Bracken (2003) and translated into Turkish by Doğan vd., (2019) and Problem-Solving Skills Scale developed by Ge (2001) and translated into Turkish by Coşkun (2004) were used. During the application process, workshop diaries developed by Bahtiyar (2019) and rearranged by the researcher, and at the end of the application, an interview form were used. In the first and last week of the 8-week process, TCT Critical Thinking Test and Problem-Solving Scale were applied as pre-test and post-test, and in the remaining weeks, activities related to socio-scientific issues prepared by the researcher were applied two days a week. The students' views on the Socratic inquiry workshop were obtained through workshop diaries and interview technique. TCT critical thinking test and problem-solving scale data used in the research were analysed in the statistical program; workshop diaries and interview form data were evaluated with descriptive and content analysis. It was concluded that the activities designed according to the Socratic questioning method significantly improved the students' critical thinking skills in the general dimension. It was observed that the activities designed according to the Socratic inquiry method significantly improved the students' critical thinking skills in the general dimension of the test. It was revealed that the method improved the students in the sub-dimension of subject, point of view and inference. It was concluded that the method did not have an effect on the general dimension of gender, but there was a significant difference in favour of females in the inference dimension from the sub-dimensions. It was revealed that the age variable had an effect only on the concept sub-dimension in the 11-year-old group. It was observed that the activities designed according to the Socratic questioning method significantly improved the problem-solving skills of the students in general dimension. It was also revealed that the students showed improvement in the sub-dimensions of interpreting and defining the problem, developing solutions, and monitoring the process, making decisions, and evaluating the process. On the other hand, it was observed that the activities did not have an effect on the special strategies used by the students. It was found out that gender did not have an effect on the problem-solving skills in the general dimension. However, it was observed that the gender showed a development in favour of females in the sub-dimension of decision making and process evaluation. It has been concluded that age has no effect on problem solving skills in general and sub-dimensions. In addition, as a result of the analysis of the data obtained from the workshop diaries regarding their views on the Socratic inquiry workshop and from the interviews after the workshop, it was determined that the students freely expressed their thoughts, obtained knowledge in the process, gained self-confidence, developed their thoughts by discussing them, and changed their thoughts when necessary. In addition, it was revealed that the students saw the workshop as a feel-good and an entertaining process. Finally, according to the results obtained in the research, various suggestions were made for conducting large-scale studies for gifted students, carrying out studies on different thinking skills, BİLSEMs, and Socratic inquiry workshop.