At the Scientific Literacy Seminar
Bybee and King discuss achieving scientific literacyby John L. Roeder
Rodger Bybee was the solo speaker at the Scientific Literacy Seminar at Columbia University on 29 January 1997, and Morris Shamos was in the audience. Mindful of this, the executive director of the Center for Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Education at the National Research Council began his talk, based on his book, Achieving Scientific Literacy, as a sequel to his appearance with Shamos at the New York Academy of Sciences the spring before (see p. 3 of our Fall 1996 issue).
Bybee recalled being a student at New York University under Shamos and acknowledged following Shamos ever since. He said he liked everything about Shamos' Myth of Scientific Literacy (reviewed in our Fall 1995 issue) -- especially its attention to history -- except the conclusion that scientific literacy is unattainable. Shamos refers to scientific literacy as a myth, but a myth need not be false and it's typically an indicator about a culture, he noted. Is scientific literacy a myth in the sense of being a shared idea in our culture, he wondered, even though it may mean different things to different people?
Bybee observed that there is a ninety percent overlap between the National Science Education Standards and Project 2061 Benchmarks and concluded that there is no lack of a definition of scientific literacy. Although Paul Hurd is well-known for his use and explanation of the term in his 1958 article in Educational Leadership, Bybee claimed that it was first used by James Bryant Conant in an introduction to a book on science education by Fletcher Watson and I. B. Cohen. In the 1960s it built on Hurd's 1958 article to refer to the social aspect of science. In the 1970s it related to unified science education =88 la Victor Showalter. And in the 1980s, under the rubric of NSTA's position statements, it became connected with STS. Throughout, scientific literacy has connoted inquiry about science and an awareness thereof.
Bybee went on to identify several different levels of scientific literacy, the "lowest" being nominal scientific literacy. Nominally scientifically literate people can identify terms but misunderstand them, have misconceptions of scientific concepts and processes, and give inadequate and inappropriate explanations of scientific phenomena. The next level, which we have mistakenly considered to be adequate, is "functional" scientific literacy, which is characterized by use of scientific vocabulary, more correct definitions of scientific terms, and memorization of technical words. At the level of conceptual and procedural scientific literacy a person understands conceptual schemes of science, procedural knowledge and skills, and relationships among the parts of a science discipline and the conceptual structure of the discipline. And the multidimensionally literate person in science understands the unique qualities of science, differentiates science from other disciplines, knows the history and nature of scientific disciplines, and understands science in a social context.
To Bybee, the guide to achieving scientific literacy is the National Science Education Standards, and the ultimate driver of education under the Standards is the Assessment Standards. In this he agrees with National Academy of Sciences President Bruce Alberts' singling out assessment as an impediment to the Standards' implementation (see page 1, this issue).
The following Scientific Literacy Seminar speaker gave a different version of "Achieving Scientific Literacy." On 26 February 1997 John King, physics professor, emeritus, from M.I.T., spoke on "Informal Education and Technical Understanding" and saw scientific and technological literacy, along with numerical, moral/ethical/religious, and language, as four interrelated "literacies." For scientific and technological literacy King saw four principal reasons: economic, self-serving, social, and the stimulation of imagination. "The more you know about things, the more the world is familiar," he observed.
To achieve scientific and technological literacy, King advocated providing a proper educational environment and attracting students when they're young. Not only the total population but also the percentage of the population enrolled in school has increased, King pointed out -- from 40% a century and a half ago to over 90% today. He pictured that population in terms of a Gaussian distribution, with the "PBS crowd" in the tail on the right and the mentally ill in the tail on the left. The bulk of the population in the middle are the "everyday people," whom we would like to know "something" about science and technology. The "proper educational environment King advocated to achieve this consists of playthings, playgrounds, and projects. Among these are models and kits like HOP and ZAP (Philip and Phyllis Morrison's introductory experiments with electromagnetism), TERC (Technical Education Research Center, whose president, Bob Tinker, was one of King's students), and something he calls quotidian technology. King's latest is a Public Interactive Experiment Box, of which he would like to see a million in public places such as malls. Each would be equipped with a changing program of 30 quotidian technological phenomena, with an "800" number which those wanting to learn more could call.
The remarks of F. James Rutherford, speaker to the Scientific Literacy Seminar on 26 March 1997, are reported on page 1 of this issue.
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