Developing scientific literacy from engaging in science in everyday life: Ideas for science educators

Abstract

Scientific literacy may be developed by foregrounding the applications of science in everyday life. In this chapter, we describe two sets of science activities that draw upon ideas from everyday life to achieve two goals: (a) support students in understanding science so that they may appreciate its national and global significance and (b) to develop citizens who are scientifically literate. Drawing upon our knowledge about science and former teaching experience, we designed two extended sets of science activities that progressively build upon simple core ideas to include more sophisticated ideas to address the above two goals. Through this effort, we hope to offer some ideas to teachers and catalyze some change to the way science is taught in schools.