Adapting Practices of Science Journalism to Foster Science Literacy

In this paper, the authors describe how the practices of expert science journalists enable them to act as \u22competent outsiders\u22 to science. We assert that selected science journalism practices can be used to design reform-based science instruction; these practices not only foster science literacy that is useful in daily life, but also complement practices of scientists that already have been incorporated into science education. We describe and illustrate science journalism practices for educational activities that can be adapted and used. We argue that such experiences enable students to better use science information for personal decision-making and help them contribute meaningfully to public discourse long after high school graduation. Finally, we describe the design of a learning environment that facilitates research and development based on this model

ASSESSING THE IMPACT PARTICIPATION IN SCIENCE JOURNALISM ACTIVITIES HAS ON SCIENTIFIC LITERACY AMONG HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS

As part of the National Science Foundation Science Literacy through Science Journalism (SciJourn) initiative (http://www.scijourn.org; Polman, Saul, Newman, and Farrar, 2008) a quasi-experimental design was used to investigate what impact incorporating science journalism activities had on students’ scientific literacy. Over the course of a school year students participated in a variety of activities culminating in the production of science news articles for Scijourner (http://www.scijourner.org). Participating teachers and SciJourn team members collaboratively developed activities focused on five aspects of scientific literacy: contextualizing information, recognizing relevance, evaluating factual accuracy, use of multiple credible sources and information seeking processes. This study details the development process for the Scientific Literacy Assessment (SLA) including validity and reliability studies, evaluates student scientific literacy using the SLA, examines student SLA responses to provide a description of high school students’ scientific literacy, and outlines implications of the findings in relation to the National Research Council’s A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas (2012) and classroom science teaching practices. Scientifically literate adults acting as experts in the assessment development phase informed the creation of a scoring guide that was used to analyze student responses. The expert/novice comparison provides a rough description of a developmental continuum of scientific literacy. The SciJourn Scientific Literacy Assessment was used in a balanced crossover design to measure changes in student scientific literacy. The findings of this study including student results and Generalized Linear Mixed Modeling suggest that the incorporation of science journalism activities focused on STEM issues can improve student scientific literacy. Incorporation of a wide variety of strategies raised scores on the SLA. Teachers who included a writing and revision process that prioritized content had significantly larger gains in student scores. Future studies could broaden the description of high school student scientific literacy and measured by the SLA and provide alternative pathways for developing scientific literacy as envisioned by SciJourn and the NRC Frameworks

EXPLORING THE NATURE OF HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT ENGAGEMENT WITH SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY AS AN OUTCOME OF PARTICIPATION IN SCIENCE JOURNALISM

In a mixed-methods study of high school student participants in the National Science Foundation-funded Science Literacy through Science Journalism (SciJourn) project, the new Youth Engagement with Science & Technology (YEST) Survey and classroom case studies were used to determine program impact on participant engagement with science and technology as well as describe the experience of SciJourn students. Student engagement with science and technology is considered as a construct made up of three components: student action, interest, and identification. Analysis of quasi-experimental administration of the (YEST) Survey resulted in rejection of the hypotheses that SciJourn high school student participants would exhibit higher engagement survey scores than their non-participant peers and also that students taught by teachers considered to be high level implementers of SciJourn would score higher than peers in classes of lower-level implementers. Three collective case studies of high school science classrooms involved in both the consumption and production of original science news illustrated the diverse roles of teacher-implementers and the resulting affordances and constraints allowed through the participation structures resulting from their project implementation choices. On an individual student level, case studies provided insight into the complexity of the engagement construct, and the potential for gains in engagement especially when student choice and long term participation in SciJourn were supported. Contrasts between the post-SciJourn engagement scores as measured by the YEST Survey and qualitative data support the conclusion that a response-shift bias occurred especially among students in high implementation classrooms, due to greater student specificity in the nature of what they consider to count as science in their everyday lives. The complex nature of engagement as exhibited by classroom case study participant experiences is presented in a new interactive model of the interplay between interest, action, and identification, into which students may enter from a variety of points, and which drive one another