The way teacher roles preferred by science teachers reflect on the lessons they teach in terms of their discourse: COVID-19 vaccine

ABSTRACT

Purpose

Teacher roles and classroom discourses have great influence on classroom discussions within the context of socio-scientific issues. Investigation of teacher roles and classroom discourses is of great importance in the construction of the classroom environment in which students can support their views and the reasons underlying their views through scientific data in cases such as Covid-19 requiring decision-making at community level. The purpose of the current study is to investigate the roles adopted by science teachers in bringing the socio-scientific issue of Covid-19 vaccine into their classrooms and whether the communicative approach they employed and the teacher roles they adopted complied with the discourses they drew on in their classes.

Methods

The study employed the case study design, one of the qualitative research methods and the study group was comprised of three science teachers and the students in their classes. As the data sources, video-recordings of the teachers’ lessons and the vignettes related to the roles adopted by the teachers in addressing socio-scientific issues were used. The similarities and differences between the roles adopted by the teachers and the discourses used by them were examined and the communicative approach used by the teachers in their lessons was analyzed through discourse analysis.

Results and conclusions

It was found that the reasons proposed by the three science teachers to explain why they adopted these roles complied with their discourses used in the classes. It was observed that the more experienced teachers offered more opportunities for their students to talk in their classes (used dialogical discourse) and that the roles adopted by all the teachers and the discourses used by them in their classes were consistent with each other. Students are required to speak scientifically and actively participate in science lessons. However, the teacher’s role in the classroom environment, classroom interactions, and the quality of this interaction are very important for this.

KEYWORDS:

• Covid-19 vaccine
• socio-scientific issues
• teacher roles
• class discourse
• science classes

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1080/02635143.2022.2116420