Do Serbian high school students possess knowledge of basic chemical facts related to real life as a prerequisite for chemical literacy? Scientific paper
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Abstract
For a long time, literacy has had a deeper meaning than just the ability of reading and writing. Chemical literacy, as a part of science literacy, represents the use of chemical knowledge and skills in solving real life problems. With the increasing influence that chemistry has on society, chemical literacy becomes one of the main goals of science education. In order to examine the knowledge of chemical facts related to real life (as a prerequisite for chemical literacy) of high school students (N = 379), we designed a knowledge test and constructed a scoring scale for evaluating achievements. The obtained results are contrary to expectations, i.e., a large number of students did not achieve a satisfactory level of knowing selected chemical facts chosen by the authors. The small number of correct answers per question indicates that the examined sample of students does not show a desirable level of chemical knowledge, implying that there is a need for new, improved strategies in chemistry teaching.
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Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license 4.0 that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
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Ministarstvo Prosvete, Nauke i Tehnološkog Razvoja
Grant numbers 451-03-68/2022-14/200122;451-03-01330/2020-14/2787
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