How to enhance scientific literacy? Review of interventions focused on improving high school students’ scientific reasoning skills and attitudes toward science

Abstract

Scientific literacy is one of the crucial skills necessary for making informed decisions and evaluating evidence. Despite the fact that the overall results of Slovak students in scientific literacy are lower than the average for OECD countries, there is still a lack of interventions focusing explicitly on fostering scientific literacy in the educational system. Therefore, this literature review aims to determine: 1. types of interventions that can be used to foster scientific literacy; 2. the main features of interventions responsible for their effectiveness. The authors conducted a content analysis of 40 empirical scientific papers, focusing on two aspects of scientific literacy: scientific reasoning ability and attitudes toward science. The study indicates that scientific reasoning ability can be effectively improved with the interventions focused on 1. scientific argumentation; 2. understanding nature of science; 3. process of scientific discovery. Interventions focused on improving attitudes toward science share similar characteristics as interventions focused on scientific reasoning and can be classified similarly. Other aspects, such as the level of guidance, teaching strategy, gender, and domain of the intervention can also play an important role.