Elementary Teachers’ Trust in Science and Scientists Throughout a COVID-19 SSI Unit

ABSTRACT Scientific knowledge is necessary to make informed decisions about many social issues, but some of the public is skeptical of science and scientific expertise. Teacher education programs are one way to address distrust in science in this generation and the next. Socioscientific issues (SSI) have been advocated as important for teaching about the nature of science, decision-making, and argumentation. This mixed methods case study sought to characterize 10 teachers’ trust in science and scientists in an online elementary science methods course for inservice and preservice teachers as they engaged in a COVID-19 inquiry unit. Data sources included Trust in Science and Scientist survey data gathered before and after the class and several course artifacts from a five-week COVID-19 SSI inquiry unit. Quantitatively, students demonstrated gains in their trust in science and scientists. Qualitatively, participants characterized their trust in science and scientists by attending to scientists’ credibility. Importantly, credibility perceptions were couched in participants’ perceptions of the nature of science, especially their understandings of empirical evidence, tentativeness, subjectivity, the nature of scientific models, and the sociocultural embeddedness of science. In the mixed methods analysis, participants were sorted by their quantitative trust profiles and showed different qualitative nature of science justifications for their trust and distrust. Participants’ trust in science and scientists were influenced by reading different sources about scientists during the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the use of media literacy tools. Implications for future research and teacher education are explored.