Climate change is a self-inflicted humanitarian crisis which promises to devastate every community across the globe. Solutions to mitigate the devastating impact of this socio-scientific issue (SSI), lie in disrupting the mind set and values which form the modern lifestyles on which the current civilization is founded. Quality science education that develops socio-scientific reasoning (SSR) skills in young people—and consequently, a high level of expertise among science teachers—is essential to mitigating climate change impacts. In science education research, "pedagogic content knowledge" (PCK) represents the foundation of teacher knowledge necessary for effective teaching. However, a comprehensive understanding of the nature of science (VNOS), which is crucial for promoting SSR and building functional scientific literacy, remains a challenge for many science teachers and their students. This difficulty often persists even among teachers with strong science knowledge and VNOS understanding. The misalignment between teachers' beliefs and the values inherent in the curriculum can inhibit effective classroom implementation of these concepts.

This study introduces a belief-practice framework with pedagogical planning tools to help science teachers integrate SSR into their teaching, while strengthening their PCK and VNOS. Both NOS and SSR rely on higher-order thinking and reasoning skills, requiring explicit, consistent reinforcement to master. Research on PCK for NOS has shown that an explicit-reflective NOS strategy, combined with use of socio-scientific issues (SSI) as a focal theme, can effectively support science teacher learning to enhance SSR in teaching. In South Africa, recent studies highlight a retreat of the high school physical sciences curriculum in addressing scientific literacy, which impacts the promotion of climate change literacy. This paper utilizes a multiple case study design to track the development and application of this framework, intended to sustain science teacher practices amidst evolving curriculum policies.

Data were collected from various planning and teaching artefacts produced by teams of post-graduates practicing science teachers, who undertook self-studies to learn to integrate SSI in their teaching. Based on this data and existing literature on NOS and SSI instruction, this study elaborates on the Learning for Teaching through Participation (LTtP) model and introduces a pedagogic tool called the Beliefs–Practice Cross-case Analysis Matrix (B-PcCAM). These tools aim to depict the evolving beliefs and practices of science teachers in promoting students' SSR.

Keywords: Science Teacher Learning, Socio-scientific Reasoning, Climate Change Literacy, Educating for Sustainability Framework, Nature of Science Pedagogy.