Interactive socio-scientific inquiry for promoting scientific literacy, enhancing biological knowledge, and developing critical thinking

ABSTRACT

Biology education emphasises producing scientifically literate students, mastering biological knowledge, and developing critical thinking. However, in reality, biology instruction only focuses on academic achievement in the Indonesian biology curriculum. Previous research has found that scientific inquiry is a practical approach to improve academic achievement and scientific literacy. Interactive socio-scientific inquiry (ISSI) was developed based on a distinctive inquiry approach. The ISSI uses socio-scientific issues as a learning context and uses digital technology as an interaction platform. This research used a quasi-experimental design with a pre-test-post-test non-randomised control group involving 196 tenth-grade students. The findings revealed substantial differences in learning outcomes between ISSI students with conventional and classroom discussion teaching methods. The ISSI students have significant enhancements in scientific literacy, biological knowledge, and critical thinking. These findings suggest the utility of using socio-scientific issues (to be criticised and resolved) and digital technology (with its interactive involvement as a learning interaction platform) to complement inquiry in biology teaching. The ISSI is an alternative method to support biology teaching in becoming more creative and encourages secondary school students to be more critical in learning content.

KEYWORDS:

• Interactive socio-scientific inquiry
• scientific literacy
• biological knowledge
• critical thinking

Acknowledgments

We want to thank the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research and Technology, the Republic of Indonesia, for funding this study. We also thank the participants for their contribution to the project. We also would gratefully acknowledge the help of Sentot Kusairi, Hendra Susanto, and Ahmad Taufiq from Universitas Negeri Malang, who provided helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary data

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Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research and Technology, the Republic of Indonesia under Grant [18.3.35/UN32.14.1/LT/2021]