Enhancing Citizenship Skills in a Chemistry Lesson: Dealing with information from different sources

Currently, the aim of education in general and science education, in particular, is to educate informed and responsible citizens. In order to achieve this aim, since 2006, citizenship education is compulsory in the Dutch education system. It is not a separate subject but rather interwoven into the already existing courses. Among citizenship skills, ‘dealing with information from different sources’ is rather essential skill that a person needs throughout his/her life. That is why this study focuses on enhancing this skill in a chemistry lesson.
Using socio-scientific issues which are ill-defined real-life problems informed by science (Sadler, Barab, and Scott, 2007), is commonly accepted as providing a useful context to enhance students’ citizenship skills and prepare them as responsible citizens. Therefore, we chose to design an SSI-based chemistry lesson to enhance the skill as mentioned above of students. As SSI, the teacher chose ‘use of laughing gas among youngsters’ which is quite popular among Dutch youngsters as a party drug. Recently it was in the newspapers. So, as an up-to-date and real-life example, it grasps the interest of students in a chemistry lesson. The consequences of regularly inhaling laughing gas are not known well. Different newspapers describe the possible consequences, but their descriptions differ on details.