BANGLADESHI SCIENCE TEACHERS’ PERSPECTIVES OF SCIENTIFIC LITERACY AND TEACHING PRACTICES

Abstract

In line with a current global trend, junior secondary science education in Bangladesh aims to provide science education for all students to enable them to use their science learning in everyday life. This aim is consistent with the call for scientific literacy, which argues for engaging students with science in everyday life. This paper illustrates Bangladeshi science teachers’ perspectives of scientific literacy along with their views on teaching practices. Participating teachers held a range of perspectives of scientific literacy, including some naive perspectives. The paper also reports that whilst teachers’ verbalised practices in relation to their emphasis on engaging students with science in everyday life follows the emphases as required in teaching for promoting scientific literacy, their assessment practices may not be useful to promote it. The discussion explores the meaning of these findings and provides implications for school science educational practice in Bangladesh.