Scientific literacy to me is about connecting dots (see relationships, critique, view things with skepticism, don't just listen and read and take things as gospel). Not collecting dots (content knowledge, rote memorization). Quality not Quantity.
My takeaway on scientific literacy: a healthy literate mind exists in a healthy body and healthy planet earth environment. Scientific literacy should be geared towards not being bookish and book-smart, but street-smart and physical as well as mental fitness. To promote scientific literacy, I agree that we must reduce overstuffing the curriculum and flooding student short-term memory ... and we must increase the relevance as described beautifully by the equation on p. 285 of the article by Holbrook & Rannikmae: "relevance is a measure of appropriateness for the student as perceived by the student." with a big emphasis on "as perceived by the student" and not by the ministry of education or by teachers. If we can increase the relevance as perceived by the student, then we have accomplished the attitudinal attribute of the ability to be open-minded, ability to view things from opposite viewpoints, willingness to be challenged, be objective, know the difference between opinion vs. fact or evidence. Also ability to be spontaneously excited by discovery ...
Teaching must be focused on practical and transferrable skills. I am happy to see the Ontario Skills Passport and Essential Skills for instance in the Ministry Curriculum Document, p. 41. I see this as relevant and contributing to scientific literacy on personal relevance, professional relevance, social relevance, and responsible citizenship. I would like to see this section of the curriculum to be expanded way more. My opinion is also that across all 3 sciences chemistry, biology, and physics, we should dramatically shift focus to Life and Health Sciences so students get a very comprehensive view of how to maintain healthy bodies and minds and taking that one step further, how to contribute to sustainable ecological development and keep our local ecosystems diverse and self-sustaining -- nutrition and diet instead of Krebs cycle and Glycolysis and how many ATPs are generated, the Chemistry of body enzymes, vitamins, antioxidants, and oxidation, and the physics of the human body with every joint and tendon seen as levers that do work, physics of fluids, buoyancy, blood, renewable energy, carbon footprint, simulations... etc...
Incorporating differentiated and tiered-tasks and assessments along with topic choice can also serve to increase relevance for students.
But really to avoid overstuffing, I think 17 year olds in grade 12 need not study deeply theoretical content. I feel like a lot of things that belong to first year or even second year university are nowadays being pushed down to Grade 12 or even Grade 11 university courses (this was my impression during the practicum). But the question remains: is that relevant to the students of today and will it improve their scientific literacy?
To increase relevance, we must focus for every topic on Connections rather than just theoretical content (Science through Educations versus Education through Science, p. 283). In his TV series called Connections (1978), Science Historian James Burke "demonstrated how various discoveries, scientific achievements, and historical world events were built from one another successively in an interconnected way to bring about particular aspects of modern technology." In my teaching of science grades 7 -9, I like to begin every main topic with some sort of historical Connections of how what we are about to learn was first conceived and invented and this serves as a great hook (interdisciplinary aspect of scientific literacy, p. 277).
When planning every lesson, we should pause to think and ask: is the lesson motivational, inspirational, and enjoyable? Rs,x p. 285
Jack Holbrook and Miia Rannikmae (2009). The Meaning of Scientific Literacy. International Journal of Environmental and Science Education. Volume 4(3), 275-288.
The Ontario Curriculum, Grades 9 & 10: Science, 2008 (revised)
Connections (TV Series) 1978. Written and Presented by James Burke
https://twitter.com/sulayman_runner/status/926570489748819968
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