The effect of argumentation-oriented astronomy teaching on preservice teachers’ pseudoscientific beliefs

Abstract

Pseudoscientific beliefs involve that seem scientific through personal explanations, hypothesis and subjective examples, even though they do not go through a scientific phase and are not verified by scientific researches. According to the researches, the preservice teachers also possess these types of beliefs, which are common in astronomy. The aim of the study is to determine the effect of argumentation-oriented astronomy teaching on preservice elementary science teachers’ pseudoscientific beliefs. A total of 98 (N=57 female, N=41 male) preservice elementary science teachers from the Elementary Science Department, in the Faculty of Education, Pamukkale University, Denizli, Turkey. In this research, the Solomon Four-Group Design utilising a Pseudoscience Beliefs Scale is administered to participants for a pre-test and post-test to gather the data. Four activities developed by the first author of this study. In-class activities are designed based on Walton’s Dialogue Theory and applied in experimental groups. The results showed that argumentation-oriented astronomy teaching had an effect on participants’ pseudoscientific beliefs. Analysing the data, the change of the scores of the participants’ pseudo-science beliefs in experimental groups was more than the ones in the control groups. © The Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology.