For decades scientists have, to at least some degree, equated society’s questioning of scientific data with a lack of science literacy. Historically, science classes at all levels have focused primarily on factual knowledge and scientific practices with the idea that experiencing the scientific process would increase a students’ scientific literacy and prepare them to make more informed societal choices. However, because individuals process information in a contextual manner, research has demonstrated simply increasing factual understanding of scientific processes, or experiencing the process of science, produces limited gains in overall literacy.
An individual’s ability to process and/or rely on scientific data may be influenced by a variety of factors, e.g., family, politics, faith, and worldview, as well as an overall attitude toward science. Unless these factors are acknowledged an individual’s ability and/or interest in using data-driven decisions may be compromised. Additionally, access to quality data is compromised when individuals and/or companies try to negate the impact of that data through misleading tactics. Collectively, these challenges led to a survey of non-science course descriptions in colleges and universities in an attempt to measure whether or not courses publicly recognize the impact of contextual decisions on processing scientific data. Course descriptions obviously do not reveal all of the course content, but they do, typically, reveal the areas in which an emphasis is placed.
Results/Conclusions
Results of a preliminary survey of college and university non-science course descriptions revealed expected similarities. Most courses listed discipline-specific topics that would be addressed in addition to focusing on the experimental nature of science. Details of the preliminary survey, from a variety of institutions and sub-disciplines will be summarized and presented. As expected, course descriptions did not list topics related to helping students’ recognize how their personal contextual lens, or lenses of others, might influence information processing.