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Content-Area Literacy: Science

By: Carol Lee and Anika Spratley (2009)

The demands of comprehending scientific text are discipline specific and are best learned by supporting students in learning how to read a wide range of scientific genres. Besides text structures emphasizing cause and effect, sequencing and extended definitions, as well as the use of scientific registers, evaluating scientific arguments requires additional skill sets for readers.

In this article:

Introduction

Scientific texts pose specialized challenges to inexperienced and struggling readers. For example, scientific research reports include abstracts, section headings, figures, tables, diagrams, maps, drawings, photographs, reference lists and endnotes. Science textbooks usually include similar elements. Each of these elements serves as a signal as to the function of a given stretch of text and can be used by skilled readers to make predictions about what to look for as they read, but consider the situation of an adolescent reader confronted for the first time by such texts and trying to make sense of them using the basic decoding tools acquired in "learning to read."

Comprehension of scientific texts also often requires mathematical literacy, or an ability to understand what mathematical tables and figures convey. Many scientific texts also require visual literacy, using diagrams, drawings, photographs and maps to convey meanings. Science texts pose several other important challenges: the use of technical vocabulary and syntax. Learning such terminology and syntax are important and sometimes difficult challenges of reading to learn in science.

The technical vocabulary of science often has Latin or Greek roots: cosm (as in cosmos), hypo (as in hypoacidic or hypoallergenic) or derm (as in dermatology, dermatitis, dermatoid). Sometimes words will have one meaning in everyday conversation and different and highly specialized meanings in science.

The demands of comprehending scientific text are discipline specific and are best learned by supporting students in learning how to read a wide range of scientific genres. Besides text structures emphasizing cause and effect, sequencing and extended definitions, as well as the use of scientific registers, evaluating scientific arguments requires additional skill sets for readers.

Benchmarks for 12th grade scientific literacy

The benchmarks for scientific literacy by the Association for the Advancement of Science illustrate the quality and scope of knowledge required for scientific literacy (American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1993).1

By the end of the 12th grade, students should know that:
  • Investigations are conducted for different reasons, including exploring new phenomena, to check on previous results, to test how well a theory predicts, and to compare different theories.
  • Hypotheses are widely used in science for choosing what data to pay attention to and what additional data to seek, and for guiding the interpretation of the data (both new and previously available).
  • Sometimes, scientists can control conditions in order to obtain evidence. When that is not possible for practical or ethical reasons, they try to observe as wide a range of natural occurrences as possible to be able to discern patterns.
  • There are different traditions in science about what is investigated and how, but they all have in common certain basic beliefs about the value of evidence, logic, and good arguments. And there is agreement that progress in all fields of science depends on intelligence, hard work, imagination, and even chance.
  • Scientists in any one research group tend to see things alike, so even groups of scientists may have trouble being entirely objective about their methods and findings. For that reason, scientific teams are expected to seek out the possible sources of bias in the design of their investigations and in their data analysis. Checking each other’s results and explanations helps, but that is no guarantee against bias.
  • In the short run, new ideas that do not mesh well with mainstream ideas in science often encounter vigorous criticism. In the long run, theories are judged by how they fit with other theories, the range of observations they explain, how well they explain observations, and how effective they are in predicting new findings.
  • New ideas in science are limited by the context in which they are conceived; are often rejected by the scientific establishment; sometimes spring from unexpected findings and usually grow slowly, through contributions from many investigators.

Source: American Association for the Advancement of Science (1993).

These 12th grade benchmarks for scientific literacy form the basis for the kinds of discipline specific questions that readers need to ask in evaluating reports of scientific findings, be they historical or current. Such questions include the following:

  • What are the functions of the investigation- to explore, check previous results, test the explanatory power of a theory? The functions of the investigation will influence how the reader evaluates the evidence presented.
  • What data has been collected and how has it been analyzed? Is the data appropriate to the questions and conclusions reached? In a high school science classroom, we should expect students to be able to evaluate the goodness of fit of data, even if we don't expect the general public to be able to critique scientific reports.
  • What are the trade offs of the research design, weighing what we can learn from experiments with controlled conditions versus what we can learn from naturalistic or direct observations? While we cannot make naturalistic observations of evolution in situ because the time scales of observable change are so huge, we can make direct observations of fossil records.
  • What are the logical links between data, findings, previous related research and widely accepted theory?
  • What are potential sources of bias that may influence the findings and recommendations?

Think of these questions as indices of the open and inquiring habits of mind of the scientifically literate adult. Life-long habits are instilled in the general public through the unique opportunity of learning science in school, and specifically in learning to read scientific texts.

Endnotes

Endnotes

Click the "Endnotes" link above to hide these endnotes.

1 The Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) science literacy benchmarks are but one example of recommendations for science education (http://www. project2061.org/publications/bsl/). More recently the National Assessment Governing Board released the Science Framework for the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress (http://www.nagb.org/publications/frameworks.htm). In addition, the National Academy of Science's Board on Science Education released Taking Science to School: Learning and Teaching Science in Grades K-8 in 2007 (http://books.nap. edu/openbook.php?record_id=11625).

Lee, C.D., Spratley, A. (2010). Reading in the disciplines: The challenges of adolescent literacy. New York, NY: Carnegie Corporation of New York.

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