In becoming scientifically literate, the student overcomes any fear of science he/she may have. The scientifically literate person is able to understand experiment and reasoning. There is a rough comfort level with basic scientific facts and their meaning. Some basic issues that the scientifically literate person understands include: how data relates to law and theory, that theory is the highest form of scientific expression and the reasons for everyday phenomena including the seasons, water cycle.
According to the United States National Center for Education Statistics, scientific literacy is the knowledge and understanding of scientific concepts and processes required for personal decision making, participation in civic and cultural affairs, and economic productivity. It also includes specific types of abilities. In the National Science Education Standards, the content standards define scientific literacy.
Scientific literacy means that a person can ask, find, or determine answers to questions derived from curiosity about everyday experiences. It means that a person has the ability to describe, explain, and predict natural phenomena. Scientific literacy entails being able to read with understanding articles about science in the popular press and to engage in social conversation about the validity of the conclusions. Scientific literacy implies that a person can identify scientific issues underlying national and local decisions and express positions that are scientifically and technologically informed. A literate citizen should be able to evaluate the quality of scientific information on the basis of its source and the methods used to generate it. Scientific literacy also implies the capacity to pose and evaluate arguments based on evidence and to apply conclusions from such arguments appropriately.[1]
Science and Technology are tightly interwoven and literacy about both are important.[2] [3] [4] National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation is a United States government agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National Institutes of Health. With an annual budget of about US$6.87 billion (fiscal year 2010), the NSF funds approximately 20 percent of (see for example: Global Challenge Award The Global Challenge Award is an online science and engineering design program for pre-college school students from all over the world. It is an initiative that started with a partnership with the University of Vermont in collaboration with the National Science Foundation, currently funded by the MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning and the other ITEST portfolio of projects) address both scientific literacy and the development of the future workforce.
Although there is not universal agreement on how to measure scientific literacy,[5] Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development is an international economic organisation of 31 countries. It defines itself as a forum of countries committed to democracy and the market economy, providing a setting to compare policy experiences, seeking answers to common problems, identifying good practices, and co-ordinating domestic [6] [7]
See also
References
^ NCES scientific literacy definition ^ NCREL Reference set ^ ^ ^ ^ About OECD page ^ Country comparisons of scientific literacy
External links
Literacy Literacy has traditionally been described as the ability to read and write. It is a concept claimed and defined by a range of different theoretical fields. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization defines literacy as the "ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate, compute and use printed and
Teaching literacy
Reading education in the USA • Phonics Phonics refers to a method for teaching speakers of English to read and write that language. Phonics involves teaching how to connect the sounds of spoken English with letters or groups of letters and teaching them to blend the sounds of letters together to produce approximate pronunciations of unknown words • Whole language • Dick and Jane • National Council of Teachers of English The National Council of Teachers of English is an American professional organization dedicated to "improving the teaching and learning of English and the language arts at all levels of education. Since 1911, NCTE has provided a forum for the profession, an array of opportunities for teachers to continue their professional growth throughout • NCLB The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 is a United States Act of Congress about the education of children • Family literacy • Adolescent literacy
Defining literacy
Functional illiteracy Functional illiteracy is a term used to describe reading and writing skills that are inadequate to cope with the demands of everyday life. This is contrasted with illiteracy in the strict sense, meaning the inability to read or write simple sentences in any language • Critical literacy
Literacy internationally
International Reading Association The International Reading Association is an international professional organization that was created in 1956 to improve reading instruction, facilitate dialogue about research on reading, and encourage the habit of reading. The IRA headquarters is in Newark, DE, United States. IRA has approximately 90,000 members, and more than 1250 councils and • List of countries by literacy rate List of countries by literacy rate, as included in the United Nations Development Programme Report 2009 • Literacy in India Literacy in India is key for socio-economic progress, and the Indian literacy rate grew to 66% in 2007 from 12% at the end of British rule in 1947. Although this was a greater than fivefold improvement, the level is well below the world average literacy rate of 84%, and India currently has the largest illiterate population of any nation on earth • International Literacy Day • List of Chinese administrative divisions by illiteracy rate
Major contributors to literacy
Frank Laubach • Paulo Freire Paulo Reglus Neves Freire was a Brazilian educator and influential theorist of critical pedagogy • Griffith Jones • Marie Clay
Related concepts
Agricultural literacy • Aliteracy Aliteracy is the state of being able to read but being uninterested in doing so. This phenomenon has been reported on as a problem occurring separately from illiteracy, which is more common in the developing world, while aliteracy is primarily a problem in the developed world • Asemic writing Asemic writing is a wordless open semantic form of writing. The word asemic means "having no specific semantic content". With the nonspecificity of asemic writing there comes a vacuum of meaning which is left for the reader to fill in and interpret. All of this is similar to the way one would deduce meaning from an abstract work of art • Computer literacy • Cultural literacy Cultural literacy is the ability to converse fluently in the idioms, allusions and informal content which creates and constitutes a dominant culture. From being familiar with street signs to knowing historical references to understanding the most recent slang, literacy demands interaction with the culture and reflection of it. Knowledge of a • Dyslexia Dyslexia is a learning disability that impairs a person's ability to read, and which can manifest itself as a difficulty with phonological awareness, phonological decoding, orthographic coding, auditory short-term memory, and/or rapid naming. Dyslexia is separate and distinct from reading difficulties resulting from other causes, such as a non- • Diaspora literacy • Ecological literacy Ecological literacy is the ability to understand the natural systems that make life on earth possible. To be ecoliterate means understanding the principles of organization of ecological communities (i.e. ecosystems) and using those principles for creating sustainable human communities. The term was coined by American educator David W. Orr and • Electracy • Financial literacy Financial literacy is the ability to understand finance. More specifically, it refers to an individual's ability to make informed judgements and effective decisions about the use and management of their money. Raising interest in personal finance is now a focus of state-run programs in countries including Australia, Japan, the United States and • Health literacy Health literacy is an individual's ability to read, understand and use healthcare information to make decisions and follow instructions for treatment. There are multiple definitions of health literacy, in part because health literacy involves both the context in which health literacy demands are made (e.g., health care, media, Internet or fitness • Information literacy Several conceptions and definitions of information literacy have become prevalent. For example, one conception defines information literacy in terms of a set of competencies that an informed citizen of an information society ought to possess to participate intelligently and actively in that society • Information and media literacy • Literacy test Literacy Test, in the context of United States political history, refers to the government practice of testing the literacy of potential citizens at the federal level, and potential voters at the state level. The federal government first employed literacy tests as part of the immigration process in 1917. Southern state legislatures employed • Media literacy Media literacy is the process of analyzing, evaluating and creating messages in a wide variety of media modes, genres and forms. It uses an inquiry-based instructional model that encourages people to ask questions about what they watch, see, and read. Media literacy education provides tools to help people critically analyze messages to detect • Mental health literacy • Mental literacy • Multimedia literacy • Numeracy Numeracy is the ability to reason with numbers and other mathematical concepts. To be numerically literate, a person has to be comfortable with logic and reasoning. Some of the areas that are involved in numeracy include: basic numbers, orders of magnitude, geometry, algebra, probability and statistics • Oracy The term oracy was coined by Andrew Wilkinson, a British researcher and educator, in the 1960s. This word is formed by analogy from literacy and numeracy. The purpose is to draw attention to the neglect of oral skills in education. More traditionally oral skills have been considered a part of rhetoric • Orality Orality is thought and verbal expression in societies where the technologies of literacy are unfamiliar to most of the population. The study of orality is closely allied to the study of oral tradition. However, it has broader implications, implicitly touching every aspect of the economics, politics, institutional development, and human development • Oral literature • Postliterate society A postliterate society is a hypothetical society wherein multimedia technology has advanced to the point where literacy, the ability to read written words, is no longer necessary. This term appeared as early as 1962 in Marshall McLuhan's The Gutenberg Galaxy. Many advanced science-fiction societies are postliterate, for example in François • Racial literacy • Scientific literacy • Statistical literacy • Technacy • Transliteracy • Visual literacy Visual literacy is the ability to interpret, negotiate, and make meaning from information presented in the form of an image. Visual literacy is based on the idea that pictures can be “read” and that meaning can be communicated through a process of reading • Writing system Writing systems are distinguished from other possible symbolic communication systems in that the reader must usually understand something of the associated spoken language to comprehend the text. In contrast, other possible symbolic systems such as information signs, painting, maps and mathematics often do not require prior knowledge of a spoken
Categories: Scientific method A scientific method is a sequence or collection of processes that are considered characteristic of scientific investigation and the acquisition of new scientific knowledge based upon physical evidence | Human skills Categories: Skills | Humans | Human behavior
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Search"> Search The Lives of the Most Eminent Literary and Scientific Men were five volumes of Dionysius Lardner’s 133-volume Cabinet Cyclopaedia . Aimed at the self-educating middle class, this encyclopedia was written during the 19th-century literary revolution in Britain that encouraged more people to read. The Lives formed part of the Cabinet of Biography
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