Preservice Teachers’ Enactment of Character and Values Through a Place-Based Drama Activity

Character and values are essential factors that affect individuals’ decision-making about a socioscientific issue (SSI). Recently, there has been an emphasis on enhancing character and values through SSI-based teaching. Studies indicate that students have difficulties reasoning from multiple perspectives associated with and feeling responsibility towards an issue. In this chapter, we discuss the importance of decision-making and socioscientific reasoning for scientific literacy. Then, we explain the prominence of character and values for responsible twenty-first-century citizenship. We identify role play as a drama technique to foster students’ character and values. Later, we discuss how role play can be implemented in a placed-based instructional setting. We present a case study reporting preservice science teachers’ character and value enactments and experiences during a placed-based SSI: settlement on agricultural land in the city of Izmir.