Özet:

In this study, it was aimed to evaluate the status of science teachers’ ability to use scientific reasoning skills, which are intellectual skills used in inquiry-based learning process and their self-efficacy perceptions towards teaching them. Convenience sampling was used to determine the participants who were 93 science teachers still working at state middle schools in central districts of Izmir province. The study was on cross-sectional survey design. “Scientific Reasoning Skills Test for In-service and Preservice Science Teachers (SRSTIPST)” with the aim of determining the participants’ ability to use scientific reasoning skills and “Self-efficacy Perceptions towards Teaching Scientific Reasoning Skills Scale (SEPSRS)” with the aim of determining their self-efficacy perceptions towards teaching these skills were used as data collection tools. At the end of the study, it was found that science teachers had success above average in the context of ability to use scientific reasoning skills. Detailed analysis revealed that teachers were the most successful in analogical reasoning and the least in causal reasoning. However, the finding that only one teacher could give correct answers to the all questions in SRSTIPST was remarkable. In the context of self-efficacy perceptions towards teaching scientific reasoning skills, it was found that teachers had high self-efficacy perceptions in both sub-factors and SEPSRS totally. Detailed analysis indicated that teachers had the highest self-efficacy perceptions scores in the items related to creating scientific reasoning skills based learning environment and the lowest in the items related to instructional ways for scientific reasoning skills.

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