Abstract:

To see the reflections of scientific literacy in individuals’ daily life manners of is one of the most significant objectives of science education. In this context, it is thought that science teacher candidates are required to have the skills of socio-scientific issues and writing arguments on those subjects. Thus, the purpose of this study is to assess science teacher candidates’ skills of writing argumentation on Covid-19 pandemic, which is a socio-scientific issue, and discuss their opinions on Covid-19 vaccine. Regarding this purpose, answers are sought for the problems “How are the writing argumentation skills of science teacher candidates on Covid-19 pandemic as a socio-scientific issue?” and “What are the opinions of science teacher candidates on Covid-19 vaccine?” The research is designed by using mixed method case study. The study group of the research consists of 33 teacher candidates who are second grade students enrolled in the department of science teaching in a state university in Istanbul. The data in this study are gathered via “Written Argumentation Form” in accordance with argumentation writing components of Cope et al. (2013). For the opinions of teacher candidates on Covid-19 vaccine, “Interview Form” including two open-end questions is used. In data analysis, Argumentation Assessment Rubric (AAR) is used for argumentation and for opinions related to the vaccine, content analysis is applied.  At the end of the research, it was found out that the teachers were successful in terms of creating “argument” and “result argument” while writing argumentation of which subject is socio-scientific, however they could not refute the counter claims adequately. Even though the teacher candidates approached Covid-19 pandemic scientifically in the arguments, it was founded out that they had hesitations about how to behave in Covid-19 pandemic considering their opinions on vaccines. Although the teacher candidates thought that it was a real pandemic and follow vaccine studies closely, vast majority stated that they did not want to be vaccinated or they were undecided about it. It is recommended to examine thoroughly the fact that vast majority of the teacher candidates thought pandemic was real, however they had different opinions on vaccines.

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