A model for analyzing scientific literacy in pre-school children

Preschool education, including scientific literacy, has recently been receiving increased attention in Germany's educational system. However, only a few studies have investigated scientific literacy in the preschool age so far. In this paper a test instrument to assess scientific literacy in five year old children is presented. The topic of the test is water, its physical states (solid, liquid and gaseous), changes of state and solutions in water. The test was administered as a structured interview and high reliability and internal validity were obtained. The children investigated show a great variance in their competencies which can be ascribed to four different levels of competence.