Socio-scientific issues are complex questions with links to science and society, which create dilemmas and are likely to have multiple solutions. Those questions are open-ended problems which means that the answers can develop in several ways. Most of the time, such issues are personally meaningful and engaging to people who need to use evidence-based reasoning.
For example, a contemporary socio-scientific dilemma is “Should we get a COVID-19 vaccine or not?”. To respond to this issue, you can make positive and negative decisions regarding getting vaccinated, based on different things: your personal beliefs and certainties, information provided by experts, your own research, national policies, etc. To get vaccinated or to postpone the decision can be also decided depending on whether some criteria would be met. This is a controversial social issue related to science and that highlights the application of moral and scientific reasoning to real world situations.
Socio-scientific issues are interesting because they have the potential to promote argumentation skills and critical thinking. The intent is to use debates around socio-scientific issues to provide a context for understanding scientific information as it creates a context for science learning.
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