FIRST RESULTS FROM THE SCIENCE LITERACY CONCEPT INVENTORY: THE REASONING WE DON'T PRODUCE THROUGH GEN-ED

Science literacy requires a working knowledge of the framework of reasoning employed in understanding and explaining the physical world. Descriptions in institutional catalogues indicate that the learning intended in general education (GE) curricula is usually metadisciplinary reasoning. Science is a metadiscipline, and the disciplines are supposed to use content to instill the intended comprehension. In a multi-campus project to promote science literacy in the California State University System, nine of us from five science disciplines used guidelines established from construction of the Geoscience Concept Inventory to author a multidimensional Science Literacy Concept Inventory (SLCI) to measure such comprehension. In 2010-2011, we pilot-tested the SLCI items in diverse courses at ten institutions across the United States through two 40-item subtests. After using item response analysis to remove unsuitable items, two reliable (Cronbach alphas of.82 and .86) data sets remained that gave consistent results. Faculty (experts) score above 90%, and students (novices) score about 60% at significant differences of P <.0001, which indicates good face validity. The SLCI results indicate that science GE courses do not instill much comprehension. Our pilot population of about 700 inventories revealed that whether students had no GE science course, one, two, three, or four science courses, overall, they did not exhibit significantly different abilities in science literacy. Yet, local variations exist, and it is important that schools interpret the SLCI based on their own students. Some classes that gave the inventory as a pre- post- course measure showed some marginal changes in overall science literacy. Upon querying, professors revealed that they taught content-rich courses, probably without enough focus on the framework of reasoning of science. Overemphasis on content may subvert achieving the larger GE vision of improving reasoning abilities through science literacy.