Implementation of Socioscientific Issues in Chemistry Education: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Socioscientific issues (SSI) are increasingly used in chemistry education to connect chemical concepts with societal, environmental, and ethical challenges. This systematic review synthesizes empirical evidence of SSI implementation in chemistry education, focusing on issue contexts, instructional designs, learning outcomes, and implementation constraints. Following PRISMA 2020, Scopus, Web of Science, and ScienceDirect were searched for peer-reviewed publications from 2015 to 2025. The review identified 50 candidate records after a database search and citation checking. After corpus auditing, 46 empirical studies were retained for the final thematic synthesis, while four nonempirical publications were used only as contextual references. The reviewed studies employed a range of approaches, including argumentation, inquiry, problem-based, case-based, project-based, digital, and modeling approaches. Chemical literacy, argumentation, and evidence-based decision making were among the frequently reported outcomes across the reviewed studies. More coherent implementations explicitly anchored the issue in chemistry concepts, scaffolded evidence use and reasoning, and aligned assessment with intended outcomes. Recurring constraints included limited instructional time, teacher readiness, assessment difficulty, student readiness, and resource limitations. Overall, the reviewed evidence suggests that SSI can support chemistry learning when they are designed as a chemistry-centered reasoning environment, rather than as a contextual add-on.