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The United States needs a broader, more coordinated strategy for precollege education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). That strategy should include all the STEM disciplines and address the need for greater diversity in the STEM professions, for a workforce with deep technical and personal skills, and for a STEM-literate citizenry prepared to address the grand challenges of the 21st century. There have been repeated efforts to produce major improvements in such education, including the production of voluntary national education standards for science and for mathematics in the 1990s. But as a battle-scarred veteran of those efforts, I view the next decade as the time when real progress might finally be made.

One common theme underlying recent reports on science education is that the content of school science and its related pedagogical approaches are not aligned with the interests and needs of both society and the majority of the students. Most students do not find their science classes interesting and motivating. These claims are especially valid regarding those students who, in the future, will probably not embark on a career in science or engineering but will need science and technology personally and functionally as literate citizens. One key problem seems to be that few science programs around the world teach how science is linked to those issues that are relevant to students' life, environment, and role as a citizen. As a result, many students are unable to participate in societal discussions about science and its related technological applications. This paper discusses the need to incorporate socioscientific ideas into the science curricula more thoroughly. This recommendation is supported by a theoretical rationale from various sources leading to a reflection about common practices in science education in three countries: Israel, Germany, and the USA. The state-of-the-art, potentials, and barriers of effective implementation are discussed.

This article introduces the essential features of the science component of 2006 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). Administered every 3 years, PISA alternates emphasis on Reading, Mathematics, and Science Literacy. In 2006, PISA emphasized science. This article discusses PISA's definition of scientific literacy, the three competencies that constitute scientific literacy, the contexts used for assessment units and items, the role of scientific knowledge, and the importance placed on attitude toward science. PISA 2006 included a student test, a student questionnaire, and a questionnaire for school administrators. The student test employed a balanced incomplete block design involving thirteen 30-minute clusters of items, including nine science clusters. The 13 clusters were arranged into thirteen 2-hour booklets and each sampled student was assigned one booklet at random. Mean literacy scores are presented for all participating countries, and the percentages of OECD students at the six levels of proficiency are given for the combined scale and for the competency scales. ß

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