| Susan Losh
Florida State University
The foundations: High school and college math and science experiences and adult civic science literacy 1979-2003
FINAL REPORT
Most countries emphasize an effective science education, partly with the anticipation that it will produce well-trained employees, and partly that science-literate citizens will understand and thus participate more fully in science-related policies. Moreover, more science-literate adults are expected to be better equipped to resist pseudoscience appeals and more positive overall about science. Yet many business and government leaders and educators complain that Americans lack science and technology knowledge. This study investigates changes in U.S. adult basic science knowledge from 1979 to 2006; however, in over time comparisons, many factors change simultaneously, rendering conclusions about change, and the role education plays in changing the public understanding of science, more ambiguous. For example, more recent American generations average more formal education and more exposure to science. Period, generational and age effects are confounded in "one-shot" cross-sectional analyses, although these variables can be disentangled to some degree in repeated cross-sectional surveys.
Using the U.S. National Science Foundation Surveys of Public Understanding of Science and Technology (total sample ~24,000) I study how educational recency (age), generation or birth cohort, gender, and educational variables influence several dimensions of adult understanding of science. Over and above one's formal educational accomplishments, general levels of understanding science inquiry were somewhat higher than basic factual knowledge, and both increased over time and by generation. Unfortunately more recent generations also appear more credulous in several pseudoscience areas. Disaggregation by age and cohort generates different conclusions than simply considering changes over time. Further, the net effects of cohort (e.g., adjusted for education) differ from those of cohort alone. These findings speak to gaps that formal education should address-and processes that occur in dimensions of science knowledge over the life cycle. Possible explanations for generational changes include more sophisticated presentations in U.S. science education and increases in the availability and ease of accessing science and technology information.
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