Which Socio-Scientific Dimensions Do 11th Graders Refer to When Deciding Whether to Be Vaccinated against COVID-19?

This paper presents an analysis of the socio-scientific dimensions which 46 11th graders, enrolled in the subject scientific culture, consider to justify their COVID-19 vaccination decision and how they managed to combine and integrate these dimensions before and after working on a sequence of activities aimed at learning about argumentation in science. Although almost all the students intended to be vaccinated against COVID-19, the results show that before the sequence, they used one or two dimensions to justify their decision, while after it, some combined up to five dimensions. The ethical and social-cultural dimensions were two of the most frequently used. The scientific dimension was infrequent in the initial argument but was, however, the most used dimension in the final argument, after the intervention. Working on socioscientific issues encourages the development of argumentation skills, and, in this specific case, health education skills as well.