Abstract:
The research aims to develop an instructional model based on socioscientific issues approach to promote scientific competencies. The purposes of this research were 1) to develop an instructional model based on socioscientific issues approach and 2) to study the effectiveness of instructional model based on socioscientific issues approach. The target group was upper secondary school students. The experiment lasted 10 weeks. The research and development method was applied in this research for developing an instructional model based on socioscientific issues approach to promote scientific competencies. The research instruments used to study the effectiveness of instructional model were scientific competencies test and observation. The data were analyzed using percentage, mean, standard deviation and t-test.The findings were as follows:1. An instructional model based on socioscientific issues approach to promote scientific competencies which was composed of three principles: 1) Presenting topics, situations or events that are currently controversial, interest in society, related to the students and emphasizing the scientific aspect. This will stimulate learners to inquire, gather and analyze information using scientific process skills and scientific mind. 2) Engaging in learning through inquiry, explaining, debating, and providing reasons to support their own ideas through scientific methods. This helps students to construct knowledge on their own and develop skills in researching and analyzing information, presenting information, reasoning, interpreting meaning, working collaboratively, and problem-solving. 3) Focusing on the learning process, summarizing the findings, and providing evidence to support conclusions. This leads to construct knowledge that can be used to solve problems or applied in daily life. The instructional model developed consists of five steps: 1) Presentinga social issue, 2) Analyzing the problem, 3) Providing evidence and reasoning, 4) Conclusion and 5) Expanding knowledge.2. The effectiveness of the instructional model was found that: 1) The scientific competencies ofthe students after the experiment are higher than the 70% benchmark, both overall and when categorized bythe components of scientific competencies at the .05 level of statistical significance. 2) The scientific competencies ofthe students after the experiment are higher than before the experiment, both overall and when categorized bythe components of scientific competencies at the .05 level of statistical significance and 3) Students have shown continuous improvement in scientific competencies, both overall and when categorized by the components of scientific competencies, from the early stages to the later stages of the experiment.