Using an innovative tool in science education: examining pre-service elementary teachers' evaluation levels on the topic of wetlands

Today's world requires citizens to make informed decisions by critically evaluating evidence and alternative explanations. The purpose of this study was to explore pre-service elementary teachers' capability of building a model-evidence link, their evaluation levels on the topic of wetlands, and their evaluations of the trustworthiness of the sources of evidence. In order to achieve this goal, we used the Turkish-adapted version of Model-Evidence Link (MEL) diagrams, an instructional tool that provides insights into the ability of learners to build model-evidence links and their explanations for these links. The analysis of participant responses revealed an accurate understanding of model-evidence links; however, participants showed a misinterpretation when evidence has nothing to do with the model. The findings indicated that the participants usually explain these links in descriptive and/or relational terms. The analysis also showed that the participants listed various criteria for evaluating the trustworthiness of the sources of evidence; however, the percentage of each was low. The implications of this study suggest a need for using MEL-like scaffolds in various long-term educational settings as well as a need for purposeful and systematic efforts to enable learners to evaluate sources of evidence for different subjects.