Inviting Controversy into Canadian Classrooms: Socioscientific Issues and Navigating Misinformation

Abstract

In an era of widespread misinformation and divisive public discourse, navigating socioscientific issues (SSI) such as climate change and vaccinations has become increasingly complex. This paper explores the crucial role that science education plays in preparing individuals to engage with SSI. It addresses two questions: How might teachers prepare students to analyze SSI and become effective information consumers and decision-makers, and how might teachers be prepared to meet the challenges of implementing controversial SSI? Drawing on the author’s experiences teaching and offering professional development to teachers, as well as what was learned from conducting a scoping review on misinformation (Brown, 2026), this reflective commentary argues that science education must expand efforts to invite nuanced and controversial SSI into classrooms to better prepare Canadians to engage with one another and with these key issues. Student preparation could include increased emphasis on SSI, a focus on developing information/digital/media literacy, fostering intellectual virtues, and connecting SSI with the Nature of Science (NoS). Teachers’ efforts to integrate SSI could be bolstered through curriculum and assessment modifications, professional development, resource creation and sharing, and enhanced support from administrators. This paper calls on teachers, teacher educators, school administrators, and science education researchers to advance this critical work.

Keywords: socioscientific issues, science education, misinformation, scientific literacy, nature of science