Socio-Scientific Issue-Based Challenge to Students' Chemical Literacy

Chemistry has an important role in global challenges. Chemistry learning has not integrated an interdisciplinary approach to improving students' chemical literacy, enabling them to provide solutions to socio-scientific and environmental problems through the application of chemical concepts. This study aimed to determine the effect of the socio-scientific issues-based challenge strategy on students' chemical literacy. This study used a quantitative methods design with an embedded model. The sample consisted of tenth-grade students of SMA Negeri 1 East Halmahera in the 2025/2026 academic year from two sample classes. The experimental class was taught with the socio-scientific issues-based challenges strategy, while the control class used conventional learning. The research instrument was a multiple-choice chemical literacy test with a content validity of 82.02% and a Cronbach's Alpha reliability coefficient of 0.983. The results showed that there was a significant difference between the literacy of students from the two research classes (ɑ = 0.05), and quantitatively and descriptively, the chemical literacy of the experimental class was higher than that of the control class. The socio-scientific issues-based challenge strategy has positive implications for student learning in and outside the classroom, positive implications for student skills, and contains socio-scientific and environmental contexts that have positive implications for the meaning of learning.