Challenges and opportunities of training teachers to develop comics for teaching socio-scientific issues

ABSTRACT

In education, a crucial aspect of teaching lies in the teacher's ability to create suitable learning media. As society evolves, so does the need to align the content of classroom media with the emerging socio-scientific issues (SSI) garnering attention. Socio-scientific issues are social issues related to science. We initiated a specialized training program to develop comics with SSI content for elementary and junior high school teachers to address this. Comics are selected as the media due to their inherent advantages in visual representation and simplification of complex concepts, facilitating easier dissemination in the classroom. Drawing on the TPACK framework and comics theory as the foundation in our interview with teachers, our study primarily focused on identifying challenges and opportunities encountered during training. This investigation reveals two themes of challenges and opportunities in technology and human resources. The findings of this study will serve as a fundamental basis for designing and implementing subsequent training sessions, specifically targeting the areas identified as problematic in the initial stages. By enhancing teachers’ proficiency in developing SSI comics, we seek to promote effective engagement and understanding of socio-scientific issues in educational settings.

KEYWORDS:

• Training
• teacher
• comics
• socio-scientific issues
• challenges
• opportunities

Disclosure statement

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