Science Literacy

To understand what is meant by science literacy, it is useful first to consider what is meant by literacy more generally. There are two ways in which literacy can be conceptualized. In one form it connotes “learnedness.” Someone who is literate is someone who has received an education and has a wide range of knowledge and awareness of art, literature, politics, and, perhaps, science. The second meaning is more specific. Being literate means being able to read and write. Insofar as it relates to science and the public, science literacy is concerned with the ability of citizens to read about, comprehend, and express opinions about science. Sometimes used synonymously with the term “public understanding of science,” a useful definition might be “the understanding of scientific matters by nonexperts.”

The philosopher and educator John Dewey, in the 1930s, suggested that citizens would do well to adopt what he considered characteristics of scientific attitudes, including open mindedness, intellectual integrity, observation, and a willingness to test ideas. The suggestion here is that citizens should be able to apply scientific thinking to the ways in which they approach social issues, politics, and civic affairs. This concern with what we would now call science literacy mirrors in a more narrow form the more general debates about citizen competence and democratic politics.

We know that most people in liberal democracies (although of course there is variation between nation states) know little about politics and many do not follow politics at all. The same could be said of knowledge about science. Democratic politics requires that citizens express their preferences, be they self-interested or altruistic, through casting a vote and perhaps engaging in other more direct forms of political action. Increasingly, citizens are expected to form an opinion on issues of political and social importance that concern science. For example, one of the most fundamentally important political issues facing electorates across the world is climate change and how to respond to it. To make the most informed decisions about what “should” be done about climate change, electorates have to possess sufficient understanding of the science, so the argument goes, to comprehend the alternative courses of action, or inaction, that could be taken and the relative merits of each in relation to their individual and collective values. This is the principal normative form of justification for why science literacy is a desirable thing for citizens to have. Simply, ill-informed citizens might make bad decisions—in the sense that they cannot connect their own best interests to the appropriate science policy choices.

A normative conception of science literacy invites dispute and conflicting interests. Competition for the hearts and minds of publics takes place among various stakeholders and the uses [Page 725]that are put to science literacy are quite different for different groups. First is the science education community, concerned with the content, effectiveness, and reform of science education. The second and third interest groups consist of social scientists, public opinion researchers, and sociologists of science. These actors wish to understand the links between literacy, attitudes, and behaviors, as well as what determines the level of support or opposition to science and technology, how is scientific authority constructed, and what kinds of social contexts are important for understanding how science is perceived.

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