ABSTRACT
If students are to understand how science can be used as a way of thinking, finding, organising, and using information to make decisions, it is critically important that they are scientifically literate. Individuals who are scientifically literate are interested in the world in which they live, participate in discussions related to understanding scientific issues, maintain levels of scepticism about scientific claims made by others, and draw on evidence-based solutions to make informed decisions about different situations and phenomena that affect their world. This chapter provides examples of how students can be helped to relate scientific ideas to their experiences, seek answers to questions that challenge their understandings, use and interpret different representations, and engage in the discourses of science. In so doing, students learn to construct meaning about what they are learning by actively doing, reading, and writing about science in the context of socially cooperating with others.
