Exploring the challenges faced by elementary school students while learning socioscientific issues through comics.

The use of comics in education presents significant promise as a tool for enhancing comprehension of educational concepts and advancing scientific literacy. Our research is centred on the development of comics to introduce socioscientific issues (SSI) content to elementary school students, recognizing SSI as a complex societal concern intertwined with science, encompassing diverse scientific and social perspectives. This study adopts a case study approach and places a substantial focus on assessing the challenges faced by students in their utilization. We probed the obstacles experienced by elementary school students when engaging with SSI-laden comics through semi-structured interviews with ten participants. Thematic analysis was applied to scrutinize the collected data, leading to the identification of three primary challenge-related themes: technical complexities of reading comics, unfamiliarity with genre conventions and difficulties in grasping SSIs. Most of our findings were rooted in both the structural aspects of comics (including technical reading and genre) and the complexity of SSI content. These insights offer valuable guidance for our future endeavours and for researchers venturing into the creation of comics for similar educational content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]