Abstract
Science and technology have increasingly profound impacts on our daily lives—how and where we learn and work, how we spend our money and our spare time, and how we communicate with each other. Unfortunately, most people have no real understanding of how the technologies they rely on work, how they were developed, and the scientific basis for their development. As demand for a better quality of life and access to the benefits of modern technologies increases globally, we increasingly face the urgent need for developing and implementing sustainable approaches for meeting the needs of societies. To do so, we will need to significantly improve science education and public science literacy globally. Despite low levels of public science literacy and interest in science, math, engineering, and technology (STEM) careers among young people, which together provide evidence for the problems besetting science education, we do have an as-yet untapped resource which can help improve science education and public science literacy—namely, STEM professionals.
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Notes
“Scientific literacy” refers to an individual’s scientific knowledge and use of that knowledge to identify questions, acquire new knowledge, explain scientific phenomena and draw evidence-based conclusions about science-related issues; understanding of the characteristic features of science as a form of human knowledge and inquiry; awareness of how science and technology shape our material, intellectual, and cultural environments; and willingness to engage in science-related issues and with the ideas of science, as a reflective citizen (OECD 2006).
In Sjøberg and Schreiner’s 2010 study of attitudes toward science education among 15 year old students in 34 countries ranging from Austria to Zimbabwe, and not including the United States (the Relevance of Science Education or ROSE study), students from more developed countries were found to have significantly less interest in careers in science than students in less developed countries.
OECD member countries are: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Chile, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, the Slovak Republic, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States.
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Johnson, R. Science and society: reflections on science education sustainability, and the responsibility of scientists. Rend. Fis. Acc. Lincei 23 (Suppl 1), 7–12 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12210-012-0193-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12210-012-0193-1