Reflections of hands-on dissection and virtual dissection experiences of pre-service science teachers

It is a controversial issue in education that students perform dissection experiments. Different opinions have been noted in studies on this subject, and various applications are recommended according to education levels. This case study aimed to determine pre-service science teachers' views of hands-on dissection and virtual dissection. The study group consisted of 36 students, 29 female, and seven male. An open-ended question form and student diaries were used as data collection tools. The implementation started with observing the chicken embryo development process that the students actively carried out. Then, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the frog dissection experiment was conducted as a virtual dissection. The content analysis method was used in the analysis of the data. According to the findings, the observations made during the chicken embryo development process emerged negatively due to ethical and moral concerns as the development process progressed. The frog dissection experiment applied in the virtual environment was accepted by the majority of the pre-service teachers who stated that they would prefer virtual dissection tools.