Fostering ill-structured problem-solving skills of chemistry students using socioscientific issues as learning contexts

Abstract

Solving ill-structured problems is a skill needed to maintain the competitiveness of students in the current technology and information era, where a number of problems that occur are ill-structured problems. Solving ill-structured problems is a skill that combines various high-level thinking and learning skills, such as argumentation, creativity, and critical thinking into a single unit of action with the aim of obtaining the best possible solution. Several studies have shown the difficulties students face in applying ill-structured problems that are related to the lack of student engagement to problems, given the complexity and novelty of the problem. Students have been more accustomed to well-structured problems that only involve the lower aspects of their thinking skills. High interest and involvement are required when encountering ill-structured problems. Engagement can be strengthened by enriching the context of problems with problems that encourage their involvement affectively and emotionally, so students are interested and challenged to overcome them. This paper discusses the possibility of a combination of Socioecientific Issues (SSI) as a context for ill-structured problem solving, considering that learning with SSI as context utilizes controversial problems that are directly related to the daily lives of students where they are already engaged in the issues. Through SSI as a learning context, it is suspected that students’ motivation and attitude towards science will increase, encouraging them to improve their cognition and metacognition process during the problem-solving process, as well as facilitating engagement in the problems. The combination of SSI as a context and ill-structured problem solving is highly potential in increasing the problem-solving skills of students, especially for ill-structured problems.