Chemistry for life: How to analyze and construct socioscientific cases for chemistry instruction

Abstract

Chemistry present in all fundamental aspects of our daily lives, and the goal of chemistry education is to achieve a chemical literate citizenry. There are some problems in the way students learn chemistry, such as lack of relevance and lack of transfer, so that chemistry educators try to add a human element in chemistry education. One effort to implement the human element is through contextualized chemistry instruction. A case-based instruction is one model to implement context-based instruction. Socioscientific issues can be used as a case in context-based instruction. However, there is limited guidance for chemistry teachers on how to integrate socioscientific issues in chemistry instruction. This paper aimed to describe a conceptual tool for analyzing and constructing socioscientific issues (SSI) cases in secondary school. The method used was a literature review. The procedure consisted of two steps, namely the search and sorting step and the data analysis step. A discussion was presented on how to analyze and construct a socioscientific issue. Moreover, an example of socioscientific issues as case-based instruction is illustrated in this paper.