The Meaning of Scientific Literacy: A Model of Relevance in Science Education

The term ‘scientific literacy’ has been used in the literature for more than four decades (Gallagher &Harsch, 1997), although not always with the same meaning (Bybee, 1997). It is a simple term and itsmajor advantage is that it sums up, at the school level, the intentions of science education. The termscientific literacy avoids the use of distracting detail and, as such, convincingly portrays a complex ideawhich intuitively appears to be correct (Baumert, 1997). Baumert recognises that the core of the ideabehind scientific literacy lies in its analogy with literacy.