IBSE Final

Chapter 5 Science Teaching and assessing Students’ Scientific literacy

tHE tEACHING OF SCIENCE: 21 st-CENTURY PERSPECTIVES 113

ment. However, these same students are not optimistic about how select envi-

ronmental issues will improve during the next 20 years. Within this conclusion,

boys tend to be more optimistic and girls tend to be more concerned and respon-

sible about environmental issues.

Concluding Discussion

In an early section of the chapter, I described different dimensions of scientific

literacy. Nominal literacy is the dimension in which students associate terms with

a general area of science, but their general understanding is lacking overall.

Another dimension of scientific literacy includes vocabulary—the technical

words of science and technology. I refer to this dimension as functional scientific

literacy. Learners demonstrating functional scientific literacy use scientific words

appropriately and adequately. Relative to science and technology, learners should

meet minimum standards of literacy as it is usually defined. That is, given their

age, stage of development, and education levels, learners should be able to read

and write passages that include scientific and technological vocabulary.

For years, functional scientific literacy has received extraordinary emphasis

in science teaching, and educators generally equated the goal of achieving scien-

tific literacy with attaining vocabulary. Science teachers should reduce (but not

eliminate) the current overemphasis on functional scientific literacy and increase

the emphasis on other domains and dimensions of scientific literacy.

Conceptual and procedural scientific literacy describes another dimension of

scientific literacy. Learners should relate information and experiences to concep-

tual ideas that unify the disciplines and fields of science. In addition, literacy in

science must also include abilities and understandings relative to the procedures

and processes that make science a unique way of knowing.

Scientific literacy extends beyond vocabulary, conceptual schemes, and

procedural methods to include other understandings about science. We must

help learners develop perspectives of science that include the history of scien-

tific ideas, the nature of science and technology, and the role of science and tech-

nology in personal life and society. This is multidimensional scientific literacy.

The latter portion of the chapter used the PISA 2006 Science survey to

explore the presentation of an assessment of scientific literacy. The framework,

sample items, and results were examples that science teachers might use to

design programs of curriculum, instruction, and assessment that might be

used to answer the Sisyphean question in science education: What is important

for citizens to know, value, and be able to do in situations involving science

and technology?