Preservice Teacher Education for Place-Based Socioscientific Issues

According to the research, effective SSI instruction helps students develop various skills, including critical thinking, decision-making, moral reasoning, and argumentation. Because socioscientific issues (SSI) are open-ended, unstructured, and debatable, specific strategies and techniques for teaching SSI should be provided. Teachers play an important role in how SSI are taught in school science, so they should develop an understanding and pedagogical knowledge to implement SSI instruction. However, the literature called for research that focuses on the types of knowledge that teachers must have to incorporate SSI into their teaching effectively. Theoretical frameworks for SSI-PCK have been developed based on previous research on pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) in the relevant literature. Regarding place-based SSI, teachers’ teaching knowledge should be expanded to include all components. Teachers with adequate place-based PCK serve as local experts or curriculum developers, emphasizing real places and issues related to local places during their instruction.