Title: Chemistry in Our Lives: Making Chemistry Relevant through Local Socio-Scientific Issues (L-SSI)
Abstract: Lack of relevance remains a major challenge in chemistry education, limiting the achievement of science education goals. Socio-scientific Issues (SSI), grounded in a socio-cultural perspective, provide a meaningful context for enhancing chemistry relevance across individual, societal, and vocational dimensions. In particular, Local Socio-scientific Issues (L-SSI), which are closely connected to local culture and societal characteristics, are more familiar and relevant to students’ lives. Engagement with L-SSI promotes students’ curiosity, conceptual understanding, and scientific reasoning. This presentation discusses several Indonesian L-SSI contexts, including coral reefs, ulcer medication for fasting individuals, and nutrition, to illustrate how locally grounded issues can enhance the relevance of chemistry learning
Short Biography
Antuni Wiyarsi works as Professor of Chemistry Education at the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Science, Yogyakarta State University, Indonesia. Her research interest and experiences in context-based learning, Socio-scientific issues, pedagogical content knowledge, and science teacher education, that granted many research fundings both national and international. She also acts as international/national journal reviewer and editor, lecturer, and trainer for chemistry and science teacher training program under the ministry of education programs.