A Study about the evaluation of the science student teachers' scientific literacy and application of science-technology-society course

SUMMARY A Study About The Evaluation of The Science Student Teachers' Scientific Literacy and Application of Science-Technology-Society Course Any country in the contemporary world cannot cope with present problems without citizens who don't have the characteristic of scientific literacy. Therefore, the modem countries try to make their citizens scientific literate in science education to keep up with continuously changing and progressive conditions of the century. Science-Technology- Society (STS) education takes an important role to be grown scientific literate individuals. In addition, a science teacher is the most important person to educate scientific literate students in STS education. The purpose of this study is two fold; a) to determine the level of science student teachers' scientific literacy acquired with the current science education, to search the relationship of the level of scientific literacy with gender and academic achievement b) to evaluate the contents and process of STS course. This study was implemented during the fall semester of 2001-2002 academic years as a case study approach. The Scientific Literacy Test (SLT) consisting of 25 questions was developed based on a pilot study. The test was implemented two times on a sample of 186 science student teachers at Fatih Faculty of Education in the Karadeniz Technical University. A semi-structured interview, which consists of 14 questions, was undertaken with a STS course lecturer to get information about the contents and process of STS course. In addition, an observation that took 15 hours was applied due to determine the current equipments and the teaching methodology of an STS course. At the end of the research, it is found that male student teachers are more successful than female student teachers in the SLT and there is not a meaningful relationship between academic achievement and scientific literacy level. Therefore, from the interview and observation, it is understood that the contents of STS course is insufficient, there is a lack of technological tools that must be used in STS course, student teachers can not adapt to the interactive methods and the lecturer does not use variant interactive teaching methods and assessment strategies. Key Words: Scientific Literacy, Science-Technology-Society, STS Education VI