Exploring Pre-service Biology Teachers' Informal Reasoning and Decision-Making About COVID-19.
SCIENCE & EDUCATION 2021;
31:325-355. [PMID:
34465943 PMCID:
PMC8390994 DOI:
10.1007/s11191-021-00272-5]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 08/04/2021] [Indexed: 06/13/2023]
Abstract
The world has been fighting with the novel COVID-19 pandemic, which has scientific, societal, and ethical components, and thus it can be classified as one of the most challenging socio-scientific issues (SSI) of our era. The pandemic required individuals to make decisions on a variety of issues, and these decision-making processes are highly related to informal reasoning and individuals' scientific literacy (SL). Thus, this paper aims to investigate the N = 26 pre-service biology teachers' informal reasoning and decision-making modes within the real-time and dynamic COVID-19 pandemic context. The present study revealed that most of the participants made rationalistic based decisions about COVID-19 and social isolation. Moral-based decision-making, which is second-highest frequency among all decision-making modes, is also specific to COVID-19 and social isolation. Furthermore, the participants utilized different arguments while self-reasoning on the issue and convincing someone of their ideas about social isolation and COVID-19.
Collapse