Scientific and Technological Literacy as a Social Practice

This paper explores scientific and technological literacy (STL) from a mainly socio-constructivist perspective. I define STL as the empowerment of people in the name of humanistic and/or socio-economic goals, and then confront it with normal teaching practices. I suggest some criteria to evaluate a person's ability to negotiate within a technoscientific society, such as `how to use': experts, `black boxes', simple interdisciplinary models (`rationality islands'), metaphors, comparisons and images; translations; standardized and disciplinary knowledge; and rationality in the process of making decisions. I examine how to emphasize meaning, contexts, and underlying projects when STL is taught, as well as some of the obstacles impeding that teaching. From my adopted perspective, I propose programmatic statements with respect to STL education and the training of teachers.