Science has led to societal changes by progressing through transformations triggered by technological innovations. Societal responses to these changes have brought to the forefront controversial and contradictory issues, in which different perspectives conflict. These issues are called as socioscientific issues. Currently, many science education experts argue that discussing socioscientific issues (SSIs) in classroom settings is essential for scientific literacy. Individual and societal decision-making processes in scientific contexts require the analysis and evaluation of data obtained from various sources as well as ethical reasoning related to these issues. So as to achieve the target of scientific literacy, it is essential to include SSIs in science curricula. The main goal of the science curriculum is to develop students' reasoning, scientific thinking habits and decision-making skills. Integrating SSIs into science courses has critical importance to reinforce these cognitive competencies and to recognize the significance of increasing the number of literate individuals within science in society. In this manner, how SSIs should be taught in science courses emerges as an important issue. The aim of this study is to determine how teachers teach SSIs. More specifically, it is aimed to examine how science teachers teach science-based topics SSIs in their lessons, their level of knowledge about SSIs, their views on SSI-based science teaching and their current classroom practices. The participants consist of 10 science teachers at the 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th grade levels. A case study, which is one of the qualitative research designs, was adopted and semi-structured interviews were utilized as the data collection tool. The data collected were analyzed with systematic qualitative analysis. The findings revealed that the participatants mainly preferred lecture and question-and-answer techniques while teaching topics based on SSIs. The teachers stated that if they implemented SSI-based science teaching, they would primarily emphasize a decision-making activity following the discussion method. According to the participants' views, factors such as the limited inclusion of SSIs in the curriculum, insufficient class time and giving priority to academic success prevent the implementation of SSI-based science teaching. All of the interviewed teachers stated that they would prefer the SSI-based approach if these barriers were eliminated. Moreover, this teaching model was emphasized to have made significant contributions to students in terms of cognitive and affective learning outcomes.
Kılıç et al. (2026) studied this question.