Is digital literacy improving science education?

• Authors: José Javier Verdugo-Perona , Joan Josep Solaz-Portolés , Vicente Sanjosé

Abstracts

EN

Mass media, and especially digital media, have become an important tool of literacy and have increased their use in classrooms for educational purposes. This is of great interest in scientific literacy and Brossard and Shanahan (2006) developed an instrument to evaluate the understanding of scientific terms and basic science concepts. In this quantitative study we analyse the relationship between Spanish digital mass media and scientific literacy in pre-service primary teachers (N = 189). Results showed that these university students have a term knowledge level lower than the one found by Brossard and Shanahan in the USA. On the other hand, conceptual knowledge was not correlated at all to the term frequency in the Spanish digital newspapers considered. The conclusions suggest that participants do not use digital newspapers to improve their science education so a change in students’ use of those digital media from ludic to educational purposes is needed.

Keywords

EN

science education; mass media; digital media; scientific literacy; media literacy; pre-service primary teachers; education and media; scientific knowledge

• Publisher: Wydawnictwo Adam Marszałek
• Journal: The New Educational Review
• Year: 2015
• Volume: 40
• Pages: 155-166

Dates

published

2015

Contributors

author

José Javier Verdugo-Perona

author

Joan Josep Solaz-Portolés

author

Vicente Sanjosé

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Identifiers

DOI

10.15804/tner.2015.40.2.13

Biblioteka Nauki

2012125