Vision II Scientific Literacy Assessment Instruments for Secondary Education: A Scoping Review

Abstract

Scientific literacy is an organizing principle for K-16 education but is notoriously difficult to operationalize. This study provides a list of instruments that measure aspects of Vision II scientific literacy, or science for citizenship. Based on the definition of scientific literacy by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM), a scoping review was performed to identify assessments aimed at secondary education, specifically for Vision II aspects of scientific literacy: “Identifying and Judging Scientific Expertise,”  “Epistemic Knowledge,” “Cultural Understanding of Science,” and “Dispositions and Habits of Mind.” Nineteen widely-cited instruments were found for secondary education levels, published after 1990 in the English language. Epistemic knowledge was assessed by 14 of them, cultural understanding of science in 12, dispositions and habits of mind in eight, and identifying and judging scientific expertise in four assessment tools. Only one tool measured all four of these aspects. Four assessment tools were framed around fully articulated specific socioscientific issues contexts, the rest were generalized. Areas of strength and deficit in evaluating success in achieving Vision II scientific literacy were identified, including the challenge of assessing scientific literacy at a community level, and trade-offs that exist around the degree of contextualization within the instrument.