Rethinking Scientific Literacy presents a new perspective on science learning as a tool for improving communities. By focusing on case studies inside and outside of the classroom, the authors illuminate the relevance of science in students' everyday lives, offering a new vision of scientific literacy that is inextricably linked with social responsibility and community development. The goal if not tote memorization of facts and theories, but a broader competency in scientific thinking and the ability to generate positive change.

Contributing to the social justice agenda of redefining what science is and what it means in the everyday lives of people, this book

• introduces science educators to various dimensions of viewing science and scientific literacy from the standpoint of the learner, engaged with real everyday concerns within or outside school;
• develops a new form of scholarship based on the dialogic nature of science as process and product; and
• achieves these two objectives in a readable but scholarly way.

Opposing the...