Post-employment Primary School Science Teachers Scientific Literacy Survey Research

Science education is closely related to the development and revitalization of countries and people as well as the survival and development of every person. In June 2001, the ministry of education of China started the implementation of curriculum reform of elementary education. The training objectives of science education in primary school change from focusing on the transmission of knowledge to concerning at the cultivation of scientific literacy. The core of elementary science education shifts to cultivating students. Teachers play a very important role in science learning of students. Whether students benefit from a science lesson is up to their teachers. The quality of science teachers has a direct impact on the popularization of science education and the level of students' scientific literacy.In recent years, an increasing number of domestic intellectuals focused on investigating teachers' scientific literacy. However, the objectives of these investigation are mostly from middle school and kindergarten, few from primary school. Therefore, considering my geographic location and the practical requirement, we selected 40 primary school science teachers from Beilin District of Xi'an city as the objects, investigated their scientific literacy by questionnaire and interview. We found that this group are young teachers who are 31-40 years old, account for the largest proportion. Teachers with graduate degree are not unusual. The proportion of teachers with two years of seniority are biggest. Full-time teachers are still relatively lacking. Teachers' gender, age and educational background have a certain influence on their scientific literacy, which is manifested in scientific literacy as a whole or a certain dimension. Female and male teachers have a significant difference in the dimension of scientific essence. There are also many differences in the overall situation of scientific literacy among three age groups (21?30,31?40,41?50). Teachers with different educational background (college, undergraduate, Graduate Education) vary in all three dimensions of scientific literacy (scientific knowledge, scientific process and scientific nature). However, there is no significant difference in the performance of the different dimensions of scientific literacy between full-time teachers and non full-time teachers.Studies have indicated that teachers can gain a lot from the training of teaching and research. They can enrich themselves, improve themselves, and strive to apply these new knowledge and teaching methods to their own classroom. Therefore, government should focus on science teachers, concern about the progress of their scientific literacy, and help full-time teachers to achieve professional development as soon as possible. Although the improvement of scientific literacy can not be achieved overnight, but teachers, schools, government, higher normal colleges must unite together, clarify the long-term goals formulated stage goals,and fight for it persistently.