Are You Teaching Scientific Literacy the Right Way?

As teachers, we hold the key to preparing the next generation of students to navigate a complex world, make informed decisions, and critically evaluate explanations. But sometimes, especially for science teachers, it may feel like all we’re doing is teaching students how to memorize facts and formulas instead of focusing on how to nurture a scientific way of thinking.

This is where scientific literacy comes in.

Scientifically literate students can discern between reliable scientific data and misinformation. They understand not just facts, but also scientific processes and practices. Today, we’re going to look at what scientific literacy is, why it matters in the K-12 classroom, and how you can prepare your students to use it in school and in the real world.

• What is scientific literacy, and why does it matter?
• The core dimensions of scientific literacy
• 6 ways to nurture scientific literacy in the classroom

[What is scientific literacy, and why does it matter?](id-what)

Scientific literacy is the ability to understand, evaluate, and apply scientific information to make decisions about the natural world and human-made environments. People who are scientifically literate have a working knowledge of the scientific method, can think critically about facts and evidence, and can use what they know to solve problems, rather than merely memorizing information.

Scientific literacy is less about what you know and more about how you think. But this isn’t an innate ability. Students have to learn it through lessons, practice, and engaging in modeled and targeted science activities.

For students, becoming scientifically literate helps them make informed decisions and evaluate the data, explanations, and viewpoints of others. You can support your students in building scientific literacy by helping them understand natural phenomena, evaluate claims, and learn to answer their own questions. Other benefits of promoting scientific literacy in the classroom include:

• Influencing informed decision making: Scientific literacy helps students understand current events, make personal choices, and participate in society as informed citizens.
• Promoting a lifelong love of learning: Strong science literacy feeds students' natural curiosity and drive to experiment. Teaching these skills through play and inquiry can help them maintain that spark as they grow.
• Building a solid foundation for society: Many of our civic systems, like a political democracy and our economy, benefit from scientifically literate users. It enables students to actively participate in their future, provides a factual framework for making decisions, and helps them avoid misinformation on important issues.
• Increasing STEM career excitement: When students develop scientific literacy, they may be more likely to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields.

[The core dimensions of scientific literacy](id-core)

How can you tell if your students are scientifically literate or if they’re on their way to building these essential skills? There are core dimensions that you can teach and look for that incorporate all the skills students need to become scientifically literate. These dimensions include:

Knowledge production and integration

This dimension involves understanding how scientific knowledge is produced and integrated into society. Students should be aware of the elements that shape scientific production, like people, institutions, training, resources, methods, and science norms.

It also helps us understand what science can and can’t tell us about the world, which enables students to identify what ideas and principles are or aren’t scientific. To teach this dimension in the classroom, try lessons on:

• Inventors and scientists who’ve made a difference.
• What scientific investigations look like.
• Science tools that help make discoveries.
• Science careers in the real world.
• How to stay safe when conducting scientific research and experiments.
• Science fieldwork and what it looks like in practice.
• What scientific data is and how to interpret it.

Information presentation

This dimension focuses on how scientific information is presented and shared in the media. It combines digital literacy and media literacy to help students assess reliable science information, understand its spread on digital channels, and critically evaluate science information in media messages.

Learning these skills can help students determine facts from misinformation on science topics. To teach this dimension in the classroom, try lessons on:

• Science in the news and what topics are popular right now.
• How information and data become digitized.

Bias awareness

This dimension makes us aware of our own biases when evaluating scientific information, especially in the media. It helps us monitor and understand our thought processes and learn how our experiences and perceptions affect our learning, problem-solving, information searching, and critical thinking.

This dimension also acknowledges that as humans, we may fall into biases like the mental shortcuts called heuristics or motivated reasoning, where we give more weight to information that confirms our existing beliefs.

When we’re aware that these biases exist, we’re more likely to recognize them when they occur. It’s also easier to mitigate them by looking for more reliable information, sources, or data to prove or disprove our beliefs. To teach this dimension in the classroom, try lessons on:

• Brain science that explores how our brains work.
• How to collect bias-free data.

Language and numerical fluency

This dimension focuses on building traditional literacy and numeracy skills to make the other dimensions more easily accessible. When students can read and write fluently, and they understand the basics of numbers and mathematics, it can be easier to understand knowledge production, information presentation, and bias awareness.

Scientific literacy depends on foundational literacy for constructing meaning, analyzing data, and interpreting visual data like graphs and charts. These skills are often woven into most lessons you already teach. Keep up the good work!

[6 ways to nurture scientific literacy in the classroom](id-tips)

Ready to start teaching scientific literacy in your classrooms or enhance the lessons you already teach? Check out these actionable tips you can start using today:

1. Collaborate across subjects

Just because the word “scientific” is in the name doesn’t mean scientific literacy is a science-only topic. Collaborate with other teachers across ELA, social studies, and math to design interdisciplinary projects that build science literacy. Incorporate science texts into reading lessons or discuss scientific claims during social studies debates. 

All teachers should emphasize that being scientifically literate can help students be better informed about the world around them. Co-develop rubrics for argumentative or research writing with your colleagues to reinforce cross-curricular connections.

For example, students may read “Hidden Figures” by Margot Lee Shetterly in ELA, discuss civil rights based on the book in social studies, and work on space-related projects and calculations in science and math.

This project can culminate in a writing project that uses the co-created rubric to help students share what they learned across subjects.

2. Rely on experiments and investigations

Immersing students in experiments and project-based learning helps them build and understand science literacy more than just reading or memorizing facts. Focus on teaching students how to formulate questions, design and conduct investigations, analyze and interpret data, and engage in evidence-based arguments.

Start students young with simple investigations. For example, present a natural object like a rock or a leaf to students and prompt them to finish questions like:

• “I wonder why…?”
• “What would happen if…?”
• “How can we find out…?”

3. Teach digital media literacy

Digital media literacy is part of scientific literacy. Teach students how to evaluate digital sources, social media, and scientific information they encounter in the news or other sources. Use tools and teach protocols for fact-checking scientific claims in real-time.

For example, if students see a scientific claim on social media, ask them to look for the author, a publication date, and supporting research or data. This can also be a time to explore and explain social media algorithms and how they surface content that matches what the users want to see, not necessarily what is objectively true.

Teach students to be critical of the media they encounter by identifying viewpoints included or omitted and recognizing how different people may interpret the same information or message. 

Try using pro/con articles in your lessons and have students use a simple checklist for author credibility, presented evidence, source data, and peer-reviewed references to determine if they’re sharing scientific facts or opinions.

4. Provide accessible learning experiences

Visual supports, sentence frames, and graphic organizers can help make science literacy lessons and topics more accessible for all students. Connecting lessons to students’ cultural backgrounds and experiences can also make them more interested in and excited about learning science.

Create a classroom culture where you celebrate curiosity and questions. Highlight diverse scientists and inventors, praise student effort, and focus on iteration rather than getting everything right on the first try.

5. Use targeted assessments

It may be trickier to measure if your students are building science literacy skills compared to retaining and memorizing knowledge. Use effective assessments that can help measure these skills to get the full picture. 

Performance tasks like Claim-Evidence-Reasoning (CER) activities, writing responses, science notebook reflections, presentations, or debates are all ways to measure your students’ skills beyond traditional multiple-choice quizzes and tests.

Providing clear rubrics that focus on reasoning, use of evidence, and source evaluation can help you. Refer to your district or state standards, like the NGSS Science and Engineering Practices, to set realistic age-appropriate benchmarks of students’ skills.

6. Engage in professional development

As teachers, we’re also always continuous learners. Seek out or request professional development (PD) opportunities focused on inquiry-based science teaching and literacy integration. 

Partner with science specialists, librarians, or educators from science organizations to co-plan or co-teach scientific literacy lessons. Request more science-specific PD from your administrators or district.

Or, you can take the initiative and find free or low-cost courses or resources (like this blog!) to help you stay in-the-know about changes and updates to teaching science and scientific literacy.

Teaching science and literacy is symbiotic with Newsela Science

Newsela Science uses authentic, accessible content and activities that get students reading, writing, and thinking like scientists. It’s your tool to fuse science and literacy, thanks to great features like:

• Engaging science content: Boost students’ interest in and knowledge of science concepts with real-world phenomena, timely news, and engaging videos.
• Aligned Curriculum Complements: Enhance and support the curriculum materials you already use with content aligned to top science resources.
• AI-powered tools: Use AI to generate writing prompts, main idea summaries, key terms, before-reading activities, discussion questions, and starting points for creating more specialized assessments.
• Embedded scaffolding: Make complex science texts and concepts accessible with embedded scaffolding tools like adaptive leveling and read-aloud mode.
• Skill-building resources: Support the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) with Claim-Evidence-Reasoning activities, performance tasks, and teacher supports.

Not a Newsela Science customer yet? Sign up for Newsela Lite and get a 45-day free trial of all our premium knowledge and skill-building products to help you create engaging and authentic science lessons.