Should we give up trying to teach scientific literacy and the public understanding of science?

Edgar W. Jenkins, Centre for Studies in Science and Mathematics Education, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK

Paper presented at a seminar held in Aarhus, Denmark, November 2004

That to me remained the greatest of all amazements – how scientists work things out. How does anybody know how much the earth weighs or how old its rocks are or what really is way down there in the centre? How can they know how and when the universe started and what it was like when it did? How do they know what goes on inside an atom? And how…can scientists often seem to know nearly everything but then still not be able to predict an earthquake or even tell us whether we should take an umbrella with us to the races next Wednesday?

(Bill Bryson: A Short History of Nearly Everything, Doubleday 2003)

I would like to begin with some comments on the two terms in my title. They tend to be used interchangeably and for the most part I shall use them in this way during my presentation. However, we should note that the term ‘public understanding of science’ is more common than scientific literacy in many of the debates in the USA whereas the reverse is perhaps true in Europe. ‘Scientific literacy’ also has a somewhat longer ancestry. Paul Hurd used it when writing about school science in 1958 whereas ‘public understanding of science’ seems to belong to the 1980s. Elements of both terms, of course, have antecedents, for example, in Conant’s attempts at the end of the Second World War to teach non-scientists the principles of science through a series of detailed historical case studies. It might also be claimed that the use of the word literacy contrasts somewhat with the notion of understanding, literacy implying some element of functionality, that is, the ability to do something with, to use, the science to which the literacy refers. ‘Understanding’, in contrast, might seem rather more passive and less indicative of engagement.

We should also note that these two terms are now in competition with a number of others. These include the public understanding of research, public engagement with science and, of course, a host of more specific literacies such as chemical or biological literacy. We also have technological literacy, engineering literacy and computer literacy, each of which is presumably related in some way to scientific literacy. So, literacy is a not a field short of qualifying adjectives or of acronyms!

It is also a term that has come to be increasingly identified as an objective, a desirable outcome, of school science education. It can be found in science curriculum documents from Australia to the United States and it lies at the heart of the science component of the PISA project which seeks to establish how well educational systems prepare young people to become lifelong learners and play constructive roles as adult citizens in society. The American Association for the Advancement of Science has published its Benchmarks

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for Scientific Literacy as part of Project 2061 and the UNESCO Project 2000+ has urged Member States to promote the development of scientific and technological literacy for all, a policy commitment that clearly recognises that scientific literacy and technological literacy are not the same. So, one might reasonably ask, what is this scientific literacy that everyone is anxious to promote?

There is unfortunately, neither a simple nor an agreed answer to this question, although most commentators would probably refer to the cognitive, procedural and affective aspects of science. The difficulty is that scientific literacy is a slogan that serves as a focus, a rallying call for key ideas, ideas that do not always sit comfortably together. Some descriptions of a scientifically literate person present a list of attributes that is so comprehensive that only a polymath could ever hope to possess such a profile. Here is one summary of the qualities that characterise scientific literacy.

an appreciation of the nature, aims and general limitations of science, a grasp of the scientific approach, rational arguments, the ability to generalise, systematise and extrapolate, the roles of theory and observation

an appreciation of the nature, aims and limitations of technology, and of how these differ from science

a knowledge of the way in which science and technology actually work, including the funding of research, the conventions of scientific practice and the relationship between research and development

an appreciation of the inter-relationships between science, technology and society, including the role of scientists and technicians as experts in society and the structure of relevant decision making

a general grounding in the language and some of the key constructs of science

a basic grasp of how to interpret numerical data, especially related to probability and statistics

the ability to assimilate and use technical information and the products of technology, user competence in relation to technologically advanced products

some idea of where and from whom to seek information and advice about matters relating to science and technology

Wildavsky has put the point differently and directly:

It has been said that democracy requires a scientifically literate population. When we consider what this lofty view demands, our hearts may well sink.

(Wildavsky, A. But is it true? A Citizen’s Guide to Environmental Health and Safety Issues. Cambridge University Press, 1995)

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For Morris Shamos, the position is even more bleak. He describes scientific literacy as a myth and attempts to teach it as a futile goal. He concludes his book with the following claim.

By now, it should be apparent that the notion of developing a significant scientific literacy in the general public, as we have come to understand its normal meaning, is little more than a romantic idea, a dream that has little bearing on reality.

(Morris Shamos, The Myth of Scientific Literacy, Rutgers University Press, 1995, p.215)

For the moment, we should perhaps not debate that conclusion! Asserting that scientific literacy includes the possession of scientific knowledge doesn’t take us much further forward. How much scientific knowledge, of what sort and who decides? Is it to be black holes, plate tectonics and the Haber process or is it to be stem cells, food additives and nuclear power? Likewise, if scientific literacy embraces attitudes, are we talking about attitudes towards science or scientific attitudes? Are we perhaps wanting scientific literacy to embrace something that might be called a ‘love of nature’ or ‘reverence for the natural world’? It is often said that scientific literacy requires an understanding of how science works, which I take to mean how scientific knowledge is established together with some understanding of the confidence we can reasonably place in it. If so, which science or sciences are we talking about? Astronomy, for example, seems to me to be so significantly different methodologically as well as conceptually from, say, molecular biology that to lump them together in any account of how science works is likely to be seriously misleading. Also, in our account of how science ‘works’, are we to place our emphasis on a philosophical, sociological or psychological account of scientific creativity, knowing well that each of these accounts is hotly contested? Is our ‘understanding of how science works’ to include insights into the relationships between science, industry, global corporations and the military? If so, whose accounts are to be presented and which, if any, is to be preferred? Again, all the accounts are more marked by dispute than by agreement. Are we to seek refuge by equating scientific literacy with something called scientific reasoning? If so, we might be in some difficulty. The philosopher Mary Midgley has suggested that the only quality that is in some sense special to the natural sciences is a love and reverence for nature, adding that

The other values that we think of as scientific are intellectual virtues such as honesty, disinterestedness, thoroughness, imaginative enterprise, a devotion to truth. These virtues are indeed scientific, but they are so in the older and wider sense of that word which is not restricted to physical science. They belong to every kind of disciplined and methodical thought, to history to logic, to ethics and mathematics and linguistics and law, just as much as they do to the natural sciences.

(Mary Midgley The Myths we Live By. Routledge, 2003, p.11)

Given all these questions and uncertainties associated with scientific literacy as a slogan, we should not be surprised that individuals and organisations have different reasons for

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wishing to promote it. I should like now to identify some of those reasons and comment briefly upon them. I shall then turn attention to what we can learn from the research and other evidence about the ways in which adult citizens relate to science. My assumption here is that if we want to argue the case for school science education in terms of scientific literacy as a component of effective citizenship, we need to know something about how science and citizens interact. I will then examine some of the practical and other implications that this interaction seems to me to have for school science education.

SOME RATIONALES

For many engaged professionally in science, scientific literacy offers the hope of disseminating to a wider public an improved understanding of their day to day work. The longer-term objective here, of course, is to strengthen public and political support for science itself although the case is rarely presented directly. Rather the reference is to national economic prosperity, wealth creation, raising the quality of decision making or enriching the life of individuals. Already, therefore, the rationale for scientific literacy includes economic instrumentalism, the defence of democracy and the promotion of a liberal education.

Isaac Asimov added to these claims in 1984 when he asserted that ‘Without an informed public, scientists will be not only no longer supported financially, they will be actively persecuted’. If you think this is an extreme position, I would draw your attention to the attacks on people and property by animal rights activists that have become common in the United Kingdom in recent years. In a milder vein, I would also point to the rising profile of a variety of anti-science movements, including the paranormal, astrology and creationism. Today, we might add the raiding of science to support reactionary political, religious and social structures. Gerald Holton has warned that

The record from Ancient Greece to Fascist Germany and Stalin’s USSR to our day shows that movements to delegitimate conventional science are ever present and ready to put themselves at the service of other forces that wish to bend the course of civilisation their way – for example, by the glorification of populism, folk belief, by mystification, and by an ideology that arouses rabid ethnic and nationalistic passion.

(G.Holton Science and Anti-Science, Cambridge MA, 1993)

Much more recently, Meera Nanda has written of those in India whom she calls ‘prophets facing backward’ who purport to offer something called Vedic science which, drawing selectively upon so-called Western science while rejecting its epistemology, is used to legitimise, among much else, the caste system and, more generally, to oppose the modernisation of the country. Scientific literacy might be seen here as a counter to these corruptions of Enlightenment values, although the historical record suggests that we should not be too optimistic.

For some defenders of participatory democracy, scientific literacy offers a means of challenging and, if necessary, countering scientific expertise. While such a rationale is difficult to oppose in principle, it presents formidable problems, not least in giving substance to the notion of ‘participation’ and in establishing mechanisms for facilitating

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it. Earlier, if not always successful, attempts to engage the public in open discussion of aspects of science include consensus conferences, like those held in Denmark, the science ‘shops’ in the Netherlands, the Science for Citizens and the Ethics and Values in Science and Technology Programmes in the USA, the Living Space Initiative in Brazil, and the study groups set up in Sweden to promote public understanding of civilian nuclear policy.

Somewhat independent of, but underpinning, the claim that scientific literacy is an essential concomitant of effective citizenship in a modern democracy is the idea that an understanding of science needs no extrinsic justification since science is itself an important cultural activity. In other words, science offers a distinct and powerful way of understanding, and operating upon, the natural world, and this justifies its claim to a seat at the table of those who would claim to be liberally educated. In the case of science, this claim has historically been couched in terms of ‘scientific method’, a claim presenting more problems than solutions and about which I shall have something more to say a little later.

Finally, more by way of completion than to prompt discussion, we should note that scientific literacy is often invoked as a necessary condition for sustainable development or for challenging and redressing social, gender, economic, cultural or other inequalities.

SOME RESEARCH FINDINGS

I should like to turn now to reviewing what I think we can learn about the ways in which adult citizens relate to science, before giving attention more directly to school science education.

There is now a substantial volume of data, from many countries and, in some instances, extending over time, presenting quantitative measures of the public understanding of science and attitudes towards it. Examples include the successive Eurobarometer surveys and the Science and Engineering indicators published every two years by the National Science Board in the United States. These international comparative studies are complemented by a host of other, more specific, studies that often address more particular issues such as ozone depletion or nuclear power.

The results of these surveys are usually regarded as disappointing with seemingly large swathes of the population of many countries quite unable to answer correctly straightforward scientific questions such as ‘Does the earth go round the sun or vice versa? and ‘ Do antibiotics kill viruses? The relationships between the disappointing levels of scientific knowledge of this kind among adults and formal education are unclear and any improvement in this measure of scientific literacy is difficult to disentangle from the more general effects and consequences of extended schooling and time spent in high education.

These quantitative surveys are complemented by a number of detailed qualitative studies of individuals and social groups involved with a variety of science (or more often, technology) related issues. The findings of these qualitative investigations reveal that the relationship of citizens to science is much more complex than can be captured by conventional questionnaire surveys. What I might call citizen thinking about science turns out to be much less well understood than scientific thinking. As perhaps might be

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expected, citizen thinking is well-adapted to decision-making in the everyday world which, unlike laboratory science, is marked by contingency and adaptation to a range of uncontrolled factors.

What does all this research, now well reported in specialist journals and institutionalised in academia, tell us? In each case, I will give only brief examples.

The interest of citizens in science is differentiated by science, social group and gender

At a general level, surveys suggest that in most industrialised countries, adults are more interested in, and more attentive to, medical issues than in, or to, most other science –related issues, save for problems relating to the environment. The length of formal education is important in determining knowledge of, and interest in, various issues and, subject to this qualification, women see more risk, and less benefit, than men in many scientific or technological advances.

For most citizens, interest in science is linked to decision-making and/or action

The underpinning notion here is that of science for specific social purposes. These purposes may relate to a variety of contexts and issues, ranging from personal matters such as health, diet, medication or child care, and employment (e.g., safety at work), leisure (choosing the best fishing rod or pair of skis), political protest (e.g., over an extension to an airport runway). Anyone who wishes, either individually or as part of a group, to engage seriously in a debate about an issue that has a scientific dimension sooner or later has to learn some of the relevant science. As an example, opposition to extending an airport runway is likely to demand, as a minimum, familiarity with the logarithmic basis of the decibel scale, the procedures for measuring and recording sound levels and the effect of noise on human hearing and behaviour, together with an understanding of the degree of confidence that can be placed in the various relevant measurements. Likewise, the parents of children born with a genetically inherited disease need to learn something of the mechanisms of inheritance if they are to understand the origins of the problems with which they are faced.

However, matters are rarely as straightforward as simply seeking the relevant scientific knowledge. The knowledge may not be in a form in which it can be used. Knowledge of genetics doesn’t help you to bring up a child born with Down’s syndrome. The knowledge may be unavailable. In the aftermath of the Chernobyl explosion, farmers suffered from the lack of scientific knowledge of how caesium 131 was taken up and retained in the acidic peaty soil of the upland areas of Cumbria and Wales. The knowledge may not be in the public domain as in the case of the thalidomide tragedy.

Citizens choose a level of explanation adequate for the purpose in hand

When the scientific knowledge is available, it may be unnecessarily sophisticated for the purpose in hand. Workers assembling computer components are sometimes chained to their benches by a metal bracelet in order to prevent the build of static electricity. Despite the sophisticated electronic environment, these workers understand electricity as a fluid that leaks away to earth. Likewise, many heating engineers have a fluid, rather than a kinetic, model of heat. How many quantum physicists think of a table in quantum terms?

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How often do we shut a door or window to ‘keep out the cold’, a quality that can only be thought of scientifically as an absence of heat?

Citizens consider scientific knowledge alongside other knowledge and understanding available to them

During the course of our personal, working and social lives, each of us constructs a body of practical knowledge, tested and validated against our individual and collective experience. In deciding how to respond to practical matters having a scientific dimension, scientific knowledge presented as relevant is considered alongside this experiential knowledge base. We may, for good reason, choose to ignore the scientific advice because the problem we face, although it has a scientific base, is more complex than science can accommodate. For example, elderly people living on low incomes on their own in inadequately insulated large houses know that it makes scientific sense to move to a smaller house and to ensure there is additional insulation against heat loss. They may, however, decide not to move because it would take them away from friends or family. Likewise, additional insulation may be an expense they judge, given their age, not to be a sound investment. Everyday thinking is clearly different from scientific thinking and we need perhaps to remind ourselves that, save when acting as a scientist, it is everyday, rather than scientific thinking, that governs our lives.

Citizens consider scientific knowledge alongside its social and institutional connections

Several studies show that in responding to, and judging scientific knowledge relevant to an issue with which they are engaged, citizens ask questions like ‘From whom?’, ‘From where?’ and ‘From what organisation or source?’ does that knowledge come. Wynne has summarised the position in the following terms.

The public uptake (or not) of science is not based upon intellectual ability as much as socio-institutional factors having to do with social access, trust, and negotiations as opposed to imposed authority.

(B.Wynne, Knowledges in Context, Science, Technology and Human Values, 16 (1) 116)

Interestingly, the Eurobarometer surveys place scientists at the top of the list of trust those surveyed have in different professional groups; politicians and journalists don’t do very well! Wynne’s comment, however, is not without significance for school science education.

Citizens have complex attitudes to risks associated with scientific issues

There are many ways of estimating risk but it is clear that knowledge is only one factor. What constitutes an acceptable risk depends, for example, on whether that risk is seen as self-imposed or as having an immediate impact. The least acceptable risks associated with science-related issues are those that are seen as the result of the actions of others and as having long-term, perhaps unknown but potentially catastrophic consequences. Ozone depletion and the storage of nuclear waste would fall into this category.

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Scientifically informed citizens are more discriminating in their judgements about science-related issues.

Several studies show that increased understanding can change judgements about a science –related issue. This good news for science education needs to be tempered by a recognition that much depends on the issue and that simply providing more or better scientific data relating to an issue is rarely sufficient to bring about a change of opinion.

SOME IMPLICATIONS FOR SCHOOL SCIENCE EDUCATION

I hope I have said enough to convince you that scientific literacy is a complex and contested concept and that what we know about how the public interacts with scientific knowledge and expertise renders it impossible to argue for any kind of scientific literacy that might be described as general. There are simply too many different publics and too many different science-related issues, some of which we should note may involve science that was not known when those concerned were themselves students at school. In addition, as I have also tried to show, functioning effectively and confidently with respect to a science related issue involves more than possessing scientific knowledge, understanding how that knowledge is established and acknowledging the confidence that can be placed in it. This, of course, should not be a surprise. Engaging with scientific claims made by experts, organisations or governments involves dealing with people and institutions and inevitably demands skills that cannot be described as scientific. If those claims are to prevail, they must supplant, or seek accommodation alongside, other essentially personal views of the world tested against experience. In sum, the link between scientific literacy and scientific knowledge is rarely direct, usually complex and sometimes very weak.

Scientific literacy therefore seems sustainable as a curriculum goal for school science only if we give it an operational definition that accommodates the difficulties and limitations to which I have alluded. The key question is ‘Can this be done’? Many clearly think so, including those associated with the ‘Science-Technology-Society’ (STS) movement, ‘Project 2061, and, in England, a project currently being developed for 14-16 year old students, called 21st Century Science. In all these cases, as in many others, there is an attempt to do at least three things. The first is to teach the students some basic science. The second is to give them some insight into how scientific knowledge is created and validated and the third is to involve the students in some way with a series of controversial science related issues.

Science teachers have, of course, substantial experience of teaching scientific knowledge. Indeed, they are sometimes criticised, not least by some of their students, for placing too much emphasis on the acquisition of such knowledge. I would make two observations here.

First, it is arguable that the principal function of school science is precisely to help students learn something of what scientists have established about the natural world. Certainly, we do not wish students to leave school ignorant of some of the fundamental principles and concepts of science, although, of course, there will always be room for argument about what might be meant by ‘fundamental. We would also, perhaps, wish

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students to develop some insights into the role and predictive power of scientific and mathematical modelling. It is, of course, possible to argue that scientific literacy is best promoted by giving students a thorough grasp of science itself to the exclusion of its external relations. Secondly, while the acquisition of scientific knowledge has always been seen as an important outcome of school science education, it has never been a sufficient goal. There are many reasons for this and I will mention only two. Scientific knowledge is subject to change and, in seeking to secure its place in the school curriculum in the nineteenth century, the case for science had to be argued in terms that paralleled those used to justify the teaching of longer established disciplines such as Latin and mathematics. The case was therefore presented in terms of the distinctive feature of science, something that it is now unfashionable to call scientific method. Whereas scientific knowledge might change, the skills to be learned from following scientific method were altogether more durable and useful in everyday life. I have no time today to trace the history of the attempts of schools to teach scientific method but many of you will recall terms like heurism, process science, learning by doing, discovery learning, the pupil as scientist and science by investigation. All of these have been supported by a variety of psychological theories about how students learn, all of which have required students to engage in laboratory science, and all have attempted to reduce a creative intellectual and practical activity into something that can be taught and assessed. The current reference within scientific literacy to the methods of science is thus simply the latest manifestation of an enduring commitment to helping students understand how scientific knowledge is created and validated.

Scientific literacy also embraces other long-standing features of school science education. These include the long-standing attempt to provide an insight into the nature of science by studying aspects of its history and the rather more recent emphasis on the external relations of science represented by the STS movement. The current identification of scientific literacy as a curriculum goal can thus be seen as something of a catch-all attempt to embrace several long-standing curriculum objectives attributed at one time or another to school science education.

If this is so, what does the collective experience of these earlier initiatives tell us about this goal and the likelihood of achieving it?

To the extent that any such attempt moves the science curriculum away from a traditional laboratory-based programme, there is likely to be some resistance, and not simply from science teachers or from institutions of higher education. Students and their parents also have views and there is likely to be some controversy both over what constitutes science and about the teaching methods that science teachers will need to deploy if the focus of the science curriculum is to shift significantly from the familiar and traditional in order to allow their students to engage with controversial socio-scientific issues. We need to know much more about what students and their teachers regard as science and what they think about a range of different approaches to teaching it. Referring to teaching approaches such as role play, drama, case studies of episodes in the history of science or classroom debates and discussion in science, Delamont voiced the suspicion over a decade ago that students

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…see them as ‘playing’, ‘messing about’, and ‘time off’. Pupils routinely categorize copying from the board as work, and anything else (discussion, experiments, role play, games and so on) as time wasting. If pupils are to benefit from teaching methods other than chalk and talk, they have to be re-socialized to convince them that such approaches are legitimate ways to learn.

Sarah Delamont, A Paradigm Shift in Science Education, Studies in Science Education, 18, 1990, 157 (book review)

Over a decade later, we are not much wiser, although some recent studies of student opinion have given us some insight. In England, for example, student support for the inclusion of controversial issues in the school science curriculum is by no means unequivocal. Asked in 2002-3 whether they thought introducing discussions about philosophy and ethics (such as animal testing) would make their science courses more attractive, 57 per cent of a sample of nearly 1,500 14-16 year old students replied yes, but 15% said definitely not and another 28% stated that they ‘didn’t mind’. There was rather more support for the inclusion of ‘controversial issues’ in general in school science (69%) but here again, 29% had no strong view. The data from English students who participated in the Relevance of Science Education (ROSE) project based at the University of Oslo also offers some insights into students’ likes and dislikes. Of 180 possible topics offered to the students in the ROSE questionnaire, ‘Learning about famous scientists and their lives’ is among the ten least popular for both boys and girls. Topics like ‘How electricity has affected the development of society’ and ‘Why scientists sometimes disagree’ also failed to attract majority support. The broad underlying issue here, of course, is which aspects of scientific literacy can, or should be, justifiably accommodated within a school science course rather than elsewhere in the curriculum, say in programmes with titles such as science studies, civics, citizenship or in a variety of cross/ multi-disciplinary activities. In 1984, the then Secretary of State for Education and Science in England, Sir Keith Joseph, ruled that any discussion of the benefits and disadvantages of nuclear power did not belong in the school physics curriculum. School physics was to be free of any sociological or political controversy. More recently, a parent wrote to the Times newspaper (London) protesting that question about nuclear energy in his son’s physics examination was science ‘masquerading as sociology and history’. Not for nothing has a course called Science for Public Understanding, available to senior students in secondary schools been described by those responsible for developing it as ‘A different way to teach and learn science’. Some, of course, would claim that much of what is taught and learnt isn’t science at all. That different way of teaching of teaching and learning is currently being piloted in the 21st Century Science project in England which, in its own words, puts ‘scientific literacy at the heart of the school science curriculum’ for 14-16 year olds. The project thus offers an operational curriculum definition of scientific literacy. The core of the course, for all students, involves basic science, together with what are called ‘Ideas about Science’.

IDEAS ABOUT SCIENCE

Data and its limitationsCorrelation and causeTheoriesThe scientific communityRisk

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Making decisions about science and technology

(Web site 21stcenturyscience.org)

The core constitutes one half of the course. Having completed it, students may then opt to study more conventional science or study modules relating to its applications. As this course is being piloted, much is being learnt about a number of key issues, ranging from student and teacher response to the time and resources needed to develop new pedagogical strategies. We know well enough that teaching science involves more than scientific knowledge, not least that which has come to be known as pedagogical content knowledge. How is such pedagogical content knowledge to be developed among teachers at both initial and inservice level? New assessment strategies are also needed. Assessing students’ understanding of, and ability to use, their basic science and their ideas about science, i.e. their scientific literacy, will require something different from a traditional written examination paper. Assessment might, for example, be based on presenting to an audience a critical overview of science text (such as a newspaper article) or other material (e.g., a video) intended for a non-specialist audience or on applying the ‘Ideas about’ science to a current or historical episode in science. Whatever assessment strategies and techniques are deployed, they will need to be able to sustain assessments that are reliable, valid, credible and command public confidence.

We should not, of course, pre-judge the outcomes of the 21st Century Science initiative. Even so, it remains to be seen whether 21st century Science will meet not only its key objective of promoting scientific literacy, as defined in its own terms, but also encourage more students to pursue the study of science beyond the statutory school leaving age and provide an adequate basis for the study of science within higher education. The Europe-wide lack of appeal of science, especially physical science, as a subject of advanced study by growing numbers of young people is, of course an important impulse for school science curriculum reform.

One of the difficulties facing courses of science for all has been described by my former colleague, David Layton, as the ‘tyranny of abstractions’, i.e. the conceptual demand of many scientific ideas that seems to put them beyond the reach of a significant proportion of the school population. We would, I think, be deluding ourselves if we believe that this tyranny of abstractions is necessarily much reduced by moving away from teaching basic scientific ideas to classroom discussions about a range of issues that have a scientific dimension. I would simply ask the question ‘What needs to be taught and learnt in order to engage in any intellectually worthwhile way in a science lesson with issues such as the depletion of the ozone layer, global warming, stem cell research, the hazards said to be associated with radiation from mobile telephone masts, genetically modified organisms or food additives?’ In reply, I would suggest, first, that the essential categories and modes of intellectual engagement required are related only very indirectly to science and its methodologies and, secondly, there is some danger here of burdening science teachers with responsibilities that they cannot realistically hope to meet. My colleague, Jim Donnelly, has written most lucidly in a recent issue of Science Education about this issue which he sees as a questionable attempt to humanise science education.

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Teaching scientific literacy is also likely to require some revisiting of the role of practical work in school. More has perhaps been written about practical work than almost any other aspect of school science, although much of the writing is exhortatory rather than informative. Various kinds of laboratory work have been distinguished and many claims have been made about the role and importance of practical work in helping students develop their understanding of scientific concepts as well as acquire a number of practical skills. However, on many of the key questions about practical work conducted by students in their science lessons, the jury is still out and I do not want to engage with the debate here. Instead, I will ask, what contribution might laboratory work to the teaching of scientific literacy? I think my answer is that such teaching requires time, resources and teaching skills that are far removed from the science laboratory. If this is the case, then less time will be available for laboratory teaching. Does this matter? I would suggest that it does, if it means that students are denied those experiences that might be regarded as central to anything that can properly be called a scientific education and which can be provided only be engaging them practical scientific activity. I am not thinking particularly of practical and manipulative skills: some of the items of equipment, especially measuring instruments, used in school science are unique to school science and would not now be found in a modern research laboratory. Rather I have in mind the engagement of students with a genuine practical problem or project that will give them first hand experience of just how difficult it is to get reliable knowledge about the natural world. I want students to ask themselves questions like ‘How do I know what I know?’ ‘Will I get the same result if I use a different method of measurement?’ ‘How reliable are my results?’ ‘How sensitive are they to particular conditions or methodologies?’ ‘What are the weaknesses of how I set about attacking the problem?’ There are, of course, many practical projects in schools that encourage this kind of thinking which I would regard as central to anything that might be called scientific literacy.

So, let me conclude by trying to answer the question that formed the title of my presentation, prefacing my answer by acknowledging that any curriculum is a compromise between competing opinions and ideologies. It will, I think, be clear that I have some reservations and anxieties about scientific literacy as a curriculum goal and about whether many of the desirable qualities associated with it are best developed by science teachers or within science lessons. I could also answer that I thought that school science teaching was always about helping students to become scientifically literate: what was ‘Science for all’ about if it wasn’t scientific literacy? Another short answer, of course, would be to invite you to tell me what you mean by scientific literacy so that I can tell you whether I think we should try to teach it or not. What I will do by way of answer is say that any commitment to scientific literacy as a curriculum goal presents at least two sort of risk. The first is of emphasising the individual and the currently fashionable in a curriculum that has hitherto embraced universalism and abstraction. The second is that subject matter is increasingly likely to be concerned with personal or social values, purposes and relationships and, as a result, with the judgemental and interpretative. This I would suggest is in marked contrast with the agreed, collective understanding associated with established science. Whether such risks are worth exploring, I leave it to you to judge.

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