Assessment of scientific literacy levels of IPB students

Abstract

The higher education institutions use scientific and multidisciplinary electronic publication with an anonymous review process and free access to spread technical and scientific knowledge. The Instituto Politécnico de Bragança (IPB) has two electronic journals with the aim of provoking, in young people, the search for wisdom, scientific spirit, respect for authorship and boosting reading and writing skills. This paper presents an exploratory research that evaluated the student's production and publication from IPB by applying a questionary about scientific literacy in the first semester of the 2020/2021 academic year. Participated 102 individuals, majority women, with Portuguese nationality, undergraduate students from Higher School of Education of IPB. The analysis revealed that 71 (69,6%) students have difficulties linked to reading and comprehension skills, just as 82 (80,4%) with scientific writing. That aspect may concern a shortage that debate characteristics of scientific reading, interpretation, and publication. Also, 85 (83.3%) students had not yet published any article, which may require scientific literacy for a better understanding of the scientific method. However, it was possible to note several other types of production developed within the scope of school activities, which may come to stimulate scientific literacy.