Investigating the Landscape of Undergraduate Science Literacy

智力价值：该项目旨在解决公众科学素养的基础问题，进一步开发一种调查工具，并初步采用对亚利桑那大学本科生的纵向研究。首要的问题是：受过教育的成年人应该拥有什么样的科学内容知识和对过程的理解，以及为非科学专业的学生开设的科学课程如何才能最好地实现这些目标？该项目正在完善一个编码方案，以回答开放式问题“科学地研究事物意味着什么？”，并将其与访谈和科学家对同一问题的回答相结合，以更细致地衡量学生对科学过程的理解。作为这项工作的一部分，该项目正在修订目前开发的一种工具，以深入了解学生从哪里获得科学信息，进行访谈以诊断信仰体系与科学知识之间的相互作用，并开发一种工具来评估学生的科学素养知识、信仰和日常生活中的决策之间的关系。所有仪器都经过了研究验证，其结果正在全国会议上向教育工作者和科学家传播。更广泛的影响：科学素养是美国科学家、教育工作者和许多政策制定者广泛关注的问题。对1.1万多名本科生的初步分析显示，那些上过三门或更多通识教育理科课程的大一新生和大四学生在科学知识得分上的表现只有很小的提高，而且他们对伪科学和超自然现象的信仰程度高得惊人。目前的实践在培养具有基础科学知识和能够区分科学与非科学的毕业生方面效果不佳。通过诊断学生对科学过程的了解，他们从哪里获得科学信息，以及科学思维在他们的日常生活中扮演什么角色，这个项目正在解决科学素养问题的重要方面。它还可以提出可以应用于天文学课程之外的教学方法，这些课程是拟议研究的试验台。在这一领域的成功有望产生更广泛的影响，帮助毕业生为参与一个日益由科学和技术主导的公民社会做好准备

Intellectual Merit: This project addresses foundational issues in science literacy of the general public, developing further a survey instrument and initially using a longitudinal study of undergraduates at the University of Arizona. The overarching question is: What science content knowledge and understanding of process should educated adults have and how can science classes for non-science majors best achieve those goals? The project is refining a coding scheme for answers to the open-ended question "What does it mean to study something scientifically?" and combining it with interviews and scientist responses to the same question, to get a more nuanced measure of student understanding of the scientific process. As part of this effort, the project is revising a currently developed instrument to gain insight into where students get their information about science, conducting interviews to diagnose the interplay between belief systems and scientific knowledge, and developing an instrument to assess the relationship between students' science literacy knowledge, beliefs, and decision-making in their daily lives. All instruments are research-validated, and the results are being disseminated at national meetings to both educators and scientists. Broader Impacts: Science literacy is a matter of broad concern among scientists, educators, and many policy-makers in the United States. Preliminary analysis of over 11,000 undergraduates shows only small gains in performance in the science knowledge score between incoming freshmen and seniors who graduate having taken three or more General Education science classes, and surprisingly high levels of belief in pseudoscience and supernatural phenomena. Current practice is not very effective in educating graduates who have basic science knowledge and who can discriminate between science and non-science. By diagnosing what students know about the process of science, where they get their science information from, and what role scientific thinking plays in their everyday lives, this project is tackling important aspects of the science literacy problem. It can also suggest pedagogical approaches that can be applied beyond the astronomy courses that are test bed for the proposed research. Success in this arena promises to have the broader impact of helping prepare graduates for participation in a civic society that is increasingly dominated by science and technology