PREPARING FOR THE FUTURE - WILL OUR UNIVERSITY GRADUATES BE SCIENTIFICALLY LITERATE

In today's technological society, it is becoming increasingly necessar y to have an understanding of basic scientific facts and processes in order to make informed choices, both in one's personal activities and on issues of public policy People in developed nations routinely make decisions on issues that have a scientific, technological and/or envir onmental component, either through their personal activities or throug h their work. Consequently, a level of knowledge of basic scientific f acts and processes is an essential ingredient for informed decision ma king. Recent surveys of adults in the United States, United Kingdom, a nd Canada have detected some indications of fundamental scientific ill iteracy in the adult populations. Positions of responsibility that ent ail policy development and decision making are often held by universit y graduates. Therefore, a survey of undergraduate students at Erindale College of the University of Toronto was undertaken to determine the levels of knowledge of scientific principles and processes in this seg ment of the population. More than 1000 student responses to the survey were recorded. The questions pertained to basic scientific principles and processes (planetary motion, pasteurization, lasers, geologic tim e, changing seasons, atomic structure, photosynthesis, acidic fluids, plate tectonics, evolution and medicine), and environmental issues (tr opical forests, stratospheric ozone, greenhouse effect, and acid rain) . The group as a whole scored 66% correct. Three variables producing m ain effects in level of performance on the test were gender, year and discipline. Males consistently scored higher than females at equivalen t levels of education, students in the life and physical sciences did better than those in the humanities or social sciences, and test perfo rmance improved with level of education. The effect of the location of high school the student had attended was not significant. The highest scores on the test were achieved by males in the fourth year of the p hysical sciences (88% correct). The questions with the lowest correct response rate were those pertaining to geology (49% correct).