AN EDITORIAL: Scientific literacy: are we all using the same definition?
As its contribution to National Science and Technology Week 1996, the Bayer Corporation commissioned a study which interviewed 301 elementary school principals and 300 human resource directors about the importance of science education in preparing workers and the degree to which workers are prepared by their science education (see Resource #25, this issue). About sixty percent of the human resource directors felt that today's students are inadequately prepared in not only science, but also in language arts and math, and three quarters of them felt that this preparation would still be inadequate in ten years unless changes were made in teaching methods. Although the principals were more sanguine about student preparation in language arts and math, they roughly agreed with the human resource directors when it came to science education. More than four fifths of both principals and human resource directors agreed on the importance of "science literacy" and felt that it would be a "requirement for entry-level jobs in the future." However, no definition of "science literacy" was given.More than nine tenths of both the principals and human resource directors interviewed agreed that the "hands-on" approach to teaching science is preferable to the "textbook/lecture" approach. In addition to the "hands-on" experience, three quarters of the human resource directors felt that future employees would also benefit from an optimum science education in terms of inquiry-based learning, real-world problem solving, and critical thinking, areas in which more than twice as many principals as human resource directors felt their schools were performing well or excellently.
The final conclusion in the Executive Summary of the Bayer study states that "there is a strong belief among both principals and human resource directors that hands-on science will not only be effective at teaching science, but also it will [sic] be successful in teaching students other necessary skills of the workplace, such as critical thinking, problem-solving, and team work." Here a distinction is made between science (presumably as content) and the processes that are learned in an adequate science education. It appears that it is the latter that the human resource directors value as the result of science education. But, since no definition of "science literacy" is given, this causes me to raise the question: Did the principals and human resource directors mean the same thing when they responded to the questions about "science literacy"? Although answering this question fully would require polling the principals and human resource directors who were interviewed all over again, I have a feeling that they did not all mean the same thing, perhaps much the same as Rodger Bybee interpreted science literacy as students' meeting the National Science Education Standards (as the principals might) while Morris Shamos referred to science literacy in adults (who would be employed by the human resource directors) in their "square-off" before the New York Academy of Sciences (see page xx, this issue). I also wonder whether secondary principals, working with students closer to employment age, would have answered the same way as elementary principals.
The "Call to Action" in the National Science Education Standards suggests, though, that there is a common ground: They [the Standards] spell out a vision of science education that will make scientific literacy for all a reality in the 21st century. . . . Scientific literacy enables people to use scientific principles and processes in making personal decisions and to participate in discussions of scientific issues that affect society. A sound grounding in science strengthens many of the skills that people use every day, like solving problems creatively, thinking critically, working cooperatively in teams, using technology effectively, and valuing life-long learning.
Yet, it would seem that human resource directors value science literacy not for the science content their employees know as much as for the processes they have learned in the course of learning the content. Paul Hickman made a similar point in accepting the first Pre-College Physics Education Award from the American Association of Physics Teachers (AAPT) on 7 August 1996: the most-cited value of undergraduate physics education by physics majors in their employment was problem solving. And the reformulation of the undergraduate physics curriculum suggested by John Rigden at the same AAPT meeting emphasizes such skills as decision making, optimization, modeling, systems, and feedback (page xx, this issue). Finally, a poll of 1400 conducted by the American Association for the Advancement of Science when Project 2061 first published Science for All Americans showed that it was regarded as more important for adults to be able to "apply scientific information in personal decision making" and "engage in scientifically informed discussion of a contemporary issue" (the type of "science appreciation" advocated by Shamos) than to "design an experiment that is a valid test of a hypothesis" or "provide a scientific explanation for a natural process." (See page 10 of our Fall 1989 issue.)
As Bybee conceded in addressing the New York Academy of Sciences, scientific literacy has not been defined with the simplicity of a bumper sticker, and this will undoubtedly lead to dialogue between participants whose conception of scientific literacy is not the same. As we go forth, therefore, in implementing measures directed toward scientific literacy, we need to make sure of our agreement about what scientific literacy means at the outset.
- John L. Roeder
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