Role-playing games (RPGs) are considered a useful way of addressing socioscientific issues (SSIs) in the science classroom insofar as they allow learners to engage with an issue and possibly change their opinions on it. This study analyses changes in preservice primary teachers (PPTs) personal positions on nuclear energy following participation in…

The purpose of this study is to develop a lesson plan that will facilitate the instruction of socioscientific issues and the acquisition of twenty-first century skills. To this end, a lesson plan comprising four hours of instruction was devised and presented in comprehensive detail. Three distinct activities were devised and executed as part of…

This paper presents a cooperative learning activity on a nuclear power plant to develop students' reasoning skills on socioscientific issues. To this end, the steps in the implementation of the activity have been given in detail. The activity was implemented in an undergraduate course with senior preservice science teachers, whose reflections were…

Purpose: This research aims to contribute to History of Education Studies as well as to New Cold War Studies, by examining a Reactor Technology Specialist Engineer program, launched in Hungary three times in the 1980s for Cuban nuclear engineers, graduates of the University of Havana. Design/methodology/approach: The institutional setting, the…

The aim of this study is to investigate the effects of energy resources activities on attitudes and views of prospective classroom teachers about renewable energy resources within the context of out-of school learning environments. In the study, quasi-experimental design without pre-test post-test control group was used. The research was conducted…

Renewable and nuclear energy are two plausible alternatives to fossil fuel-based energy production. This study reports students' beliefs about the usefulness of these two options in reducing global warming and their willingness to undertake actions that would encourage their uptake. Using a specially designed questionnaire, students'…

There currently exists a significant deficiency in the nuclear chemistry workforce within the United States, despite its importance in areas of medicine, national security, and energy. Poor coverage of this topic across many chemistry departments at the undergraduate level likely contributes to this shortage. Increasing interest and hands-on…

This article summarises the results of a preliminary feasibility study and the experience of implementing Conceive-Design-Implement-Operate (CDIO) ideas during 2016-2019 in the education of nuclear specialists. The study is a form of empirical research. The results and findings regarding implementation of the CDIO approach are presented in…

There is not a common attitude in a society for socio-scientific issues (SSI) such as whether to use nuclear power plants for energy production. Within this respect, the aim of the research is to examine pre-service science teachers' and pre-service social studies teachers' attitudes toward SSI and to reveal their views about setting up nuclear…

The purpose of this study is to determine the metaphors that the candidate teachers develop about the nuclear power plants in a socio-scientific issues-based environmental education class and the justification of these metaphors. The study was constructed on the basis of a qualitative research model and phenomenological (phenomenology) pattern was…

The teaching of socioscientific issues (SSI) holds promise for advancing functional scientific literacy, promoting critical thinking, and providing an interesting context for learning required science content, but few teachers actually employ this teaching method in K-12 classrooms. One common reason cited by teachers is their concern about the…

Background: Many students carry negative beliefs about nuclear radiation and have concerns regarding the safety of nuclear power. However, most of these students have not had any personal or educational experiences with nuclear radiation or reactors on which to form these opinions. Purpose: To examine the influence that a visit to a nuclear…

One-hundred and twenty-seven Norwegian upper-secondary school students completing college preparatory courses (41% female) were asked to select the texts they wanted to use in order to write a letter to the editor about a socio-scientific topic, with 60 students assigned the topic of climate change and 67 students assigned the topic of nuclear…

We report on our experience with the implementation of project-based teamwork on nuclear energy with 14 ninth-grade students from a lower secondary model school and its assessment using two written questionnaires, which were answered by the students after the completion of the project. The first questionnaire elicited students' opinions about the…

The purpose of this research was to investigate pre-service science teachers' (PST) views about nuclear energy and to examine what effects, if any, of gender and the university of instruction had on their views. Data were collected through the Risks and Benefits about Nuclear Energy Scale (Iseri, 2012). The sample consisted of 214 PSTs who…