The aim of this exploratory research is to understand teaching orientations of freshman pre-service science teachers and their rationales for those orientations. Through a mixed method, the current study collected quantitative (Pedagogy of Science Teaching Test) and qualitative (semi-structured interviews) data to deepen and analyze the research. The sample of the quantitative part in the study consisted of 143 freshman pre-service science teachers (122 females and 21 males) purposefully drawn from a state university in Turkey. To understand their rationales of their teaching orientation preferences, semi-structured interviews were conducted with fourteen interviewees, who held varying science teaching orientations. The findings of this research showed that the freshman pre-service science teachers had a variety of orientations that were not influenced by their earlier science learning experiences. Also, the results indicated that the orientations were largely related to the freshman