| The importance of science literacy is widely acclaimed, yet studies continually decry its decline. Colleges cultivate science literacy through core curriculum requirements, but disagreements regarding what skills, knowledge, and attitudes constitute science literacy provide little instructional guidance. Nevertheless, the essence of science literacy embodies scientific knowledge applicable to social, economic, and political circumstances. The inability of the core curriculum to cover all such knowledge or circumstances suggests the importance of teaching students to learn how to learn meaningfully.;Theory postulates that learning occurs when teachers and students explicitly share their expectations and understandings, i.e., they value shared meaning. Furthermore, meaningful learning requires a conscious commitment by the learner to integrate new concepts into existing knowledge.;Therefore, this interpretivist inquiry investigated student conceptions of science literacy and meaningful learning in the context of a core curriculum course for nonscience majors. A questionnaire assessing learning strategies showed students in this course moved away from rote memorization toward meaningful learning.;Semi-structured interviews with a sample of twenty-two students, stratified by both gender and score on the learning strategies questionnaire, were transcribed, and concept maps were made. The transcripts were coded and a category system representing learning and science literacy as exyerienced by nonscience majors was developed.;The students described learning and science literacy in strikingly similar terms, with substantive differences between rote and meaningful learners and between males and females within these two learning strategies. Rote males viewed learning and science literacy in terms of the amount of knowledge they had, whereas their female counterparts emphasized the processes of receiving such knowledge. Meaningful male learners spoke not of passive processes, but rather of making connections between knowledge they had and knowledge they wanted to learn. Meaningful females focused on making connections between domains of knowledge, e.g., biology and chemistry, with hopes for applying their knowledge and solving problems. Contextual interpretation of these conceptions of learning and science literacy showed that a core curriculum making explicit commitments to shared meaning and incorporating opportunities for meaningful learning provided students a skill broadly transferable to science literacy: learning how to learn. |
