Secondary School Students and Internet Forums—A Survey of Student Views Contrasted with an Analysis of Internet Forum Posts

Pedagogy of Emerging Technologies in Chemical Education during the Era of Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence: A Systematic Review

The technological advancement and rapid development of artificial intelligence have led to a growing number of studies investigating pedagogical innovations incorporated with emerging technologies in this digital era. An increasing amount of empirical evidence has suggested the potential benefits of incorporating digital technologies and artificial intelligence in various educational contexts, such as the K-12 education, and a change in learning modality in the unprecedented period of COVID-19. In chemical education, various types of emerging technologies, such as eye-tracking techniques, learning analytics, robotics, virtual reality (VR), and augmented reality (AR), have seen wide applications and promising prospects. In this paper, a systematic review of emerging technologies adopted in chemical education during this era of digitalization and artificial intelligence is presented. The current study aims to identify the major types of technologies adopted in chemical education and analyze the empirical findings from relevant studies. A total of 45 studies between 2010 and 2021 were analyzed through a literature search in three inter-disciplinary databases: Web of Science, Scopus, and the Educational Information Resource Center. Full-text retrieval and analysis of the included studies were conducted. The present study finds that AR and VR applications were most extensively investigated among the identified types of technologies adopted in chemical education, while the major focus areas were associated with virtual chemistry laboratories, visualization and interaction with chemical structures, and classroom hands-on activities. The evidence presented in this study also indicates the promising applications of artificial intelligence and learning analytics in the analysis of students’ feedback and behavior, assessment of students’ understanding of chemical concepts, and investigations of students’ reasoning and cognitive processes during chemical tasks such as spectral interpretation. Furthermore, areas requiring more research, investigations, potential future applications, as well as pedagogical implications of education for sustainable development will be identified based on the evidence presented in this study. The findings of this study are expected to give insight on the evolving areas of chemical education research and technology-enhanced teaching and learning.

A Survey of Indonesian Science Teachers’ Experience and Perceptions toward Socio-Scientific Issues-Based Science Education

This survey explored Indonesian science teachers’ experience and perceptions toward science teaching that is based on socio-scientific issues (SSIs). The participants were asked whether or not they already used corresponding practices in their own teaching and whether they experienced any challenges in implementing SSI-based pedagogies. Further focal points were the teachers’ views on student competencies that can be fostered through SSI-based education, the connection of SSI-based pedagogies with students’ character formation, potential topics for implementing SSIs in science education, and the teachers’ interest in such implementation. Data were collected with the help of a questionnaire that was administered to 99 science teachers. This was then followed up by interviews with 20 intentionally selected teachers taken from the overall sample. The study revealed that teachers’ familiarity with SSI-based pedagogies varies greatly. Regardless of their familiarity with the term, some of the teachers had already implemented corresponding practices at varying levels of intensity. Although almost all of the participants saw potential in SSI-based pedagogies for increasing student competency development and character formation, most of the respondents did not implement SSI-based teaching very often in their lessons. They mentioned several challenges that hindered them in implementing SSI in their teaching practices. Reasons included the lack of necessary students’ competencies, a lack of teacher expertise, the content in the official curriculum, inadequate facilities, and a lack of time for lesson preparation and implementation. When asked for ideas in implementing SSI-based education, teachers basically suggested topics related to the environment or technology as suitable for SSI-based education. In spite of the many challenges, most of the teachers were still interested in implementing SSIs in their classes.