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.
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Notes
- 1.
Pseudonyms are used in this chapter.
- 2.
Red “dragonfruit” is a vernacular name of pitaya, a fruit of cactus species. This fruit is popularly consumed as it is known to contain antioxidant properties.
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- 4.
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- 6.
- 7.
Due to the intense color and high water solubility of the red dragonfruit extract, one dragonfruit is sufficient for an activity involving a class of 30 students.
- 8.
This demonstration was introduced by Assoc Prof Sow Chorng Haur, Department of Physics, National University of Singapore and has been a constant feature in the NUS Science Demonstration Laboratory demonstration sessions ever since.
- 9.
As more information about the described activities is readily available in public sources such as the Internet, we have avoided providing technical details. This would also encourage teachers to read up and implement the activities in their classrooms.
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Teo, T.W., Lim, K.Y. (2014). Developing Scientific Literacy from Engaging in Science in Everyday Life: Ideas for Science Educators. In: Tan Wee Hin, L., Subramaniam, R. (eds) Communicating Science to the Public. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9097-0_3
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