In a recent issue of the magazine American Scientist, School of Education faculty member John Rudolph offered an analysis of the origins of scientific literacy — the basic understanding of science required for everyday life — and how our cultural understanding of scientific literacy should inform science education.
Rudolph is a professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction. In the article, he traces the history of the idea of scientific literacy back to concerns about soldier literacy that emerged at the start of World War II.
“While scientific literacy may have served to effectively direct public attention to the plight of science education during a period of neglect after the war, the slogan has been too easily co-opted for one purpose or another over the years and is really less useful than we might think,” Rudolph says.
Rudolph argues the concept of scientific literacy as it is broadly understood is too vague to be useful, and that there needs to be broader cultural agreement about what science education for the general public seeks to accomplish. He contends that purpose should be building understanding of where scientific knowledge comes from and why we can trust it for making personal and policy decisions. He explores that argument in detail in his recent book, “Why We Teach Science (and Why We Should).”
“I wrote this policy piece to try to get the public past the platitudes about scientific literacy that seem to me to stand in the way of real progress in reforming science education,” he says. “Too often—and more and more lately—we see ‘scientific literacy’ as equivalent to ‘knowing science facts’ or being technically proficient in a science discipline, which research shows is the least useful kind of science knowledge for the general public.”
Read the American Scientist article here.