Developing a conceptual model for students’ scientific civic engagement self-concept

To prepare students to meet challenges of the twenty-first century, science educators must equip students with science literacy skills and the means to apply those skills to benefit their communities, i.e. science civic engagement (SCE) with dimensions of civic knowledge, civic confidence, civic action and civic value. In a college-level science literacy course we investigated students’ SCE self-concept (SCE-SC) or how they envision their ability to use their science knowledge and skills to impact their communities using a pre and post-instruction Likert-scale self-report instrument along with one open-response question. We found in students’ written response describing their SCE-SC that while students may not consistently identify mechanisms for using science to help their communities, they do believe that science skills will benefit their communities. We also observed positive relationships between SCE-SC and both science identity and perceived cohesion to a community, suggesting these are important aspects of SCE-SC development. While overall SCE-SC did not increase after the completion of the science literacy course, we did observe a significant increase in scientific civic knowledge. We suggest that classroom experiences aimed at supporting civic engagement teach science skills through examples grounded in salient community contexts.

为助力学生应对21世纪的各类挑战，科学教育工作者需培养学生掌握科学素养技能，并使其具备将这些技能应用于造福所在社区的能力，即科学公民参与（Science Civic Engagement, SCE），其维度涵盖公民知识、公民信心、公民行动与公民价值。本研究在一门大学阶段的科学素养课程中，借助教学前后的李克特量表自我报告问卷与一道开放题，调查了学生的科学公民参与自我概念（Science Civic Engagement Self-Concept, SCE-SC）——即学生对自身运用科学知识与技能影响所在社区的能力的认知。在描述自身SCE-SC的学生书面反馈中，研究团队发现：尽管学生未必能始终明确阐述运用科学助力社区的具体路径，但他们普遍认可科学技能能够造福所在社区。研究同时发现，SCE自我概念与科学认同、感知到的社区联结感均呈正相关，这表明二者是SCE自我概念发展的重要维度。尽管完成该科学素养课程后，学生的整体SCE自我概念并未出现显著提升，但研究团队观察到其科学公民知识水平有了显著增长。研究团队建议，旨在支持公民参与的课堂教学活动，可通过依托贴合实际的社区场景的案例，传授科学技能。