Scientific literacy and social representations of secondary school students about science and technology

The research aims at characterizing the scientific knowledge of secondary school students and their social representations on science and technology. Four hundred eleven students from a school from Florianopolis have participated, who answered to a questionnaire with open-ended questions about what they understood by science and technology and a reduced version of the Test of Basic Scientific Literacy (TACB). TACB scores were correlated with school performance variables, interest in science and technology and frequency of access to information on the subject, and further a descendent hierarchical classification was carried on with the Alceste software to analyze the open-ended questions. Correlations of TACB dimensions with interest and frequency of information on science and technology were found, as well as with school performance. Representations about science and technology were shown to be interrelated, and no association between level of scientific knowledge and representational contents was observed.