Improving Scientific Literacy: Make it Real, Make it Relevant, Inspire Curiosity, and Engage Audiences in Scientific Thinking

Through the use of effective communication strategies, Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) experts can and do play an impactful role in building scientific literacy to broad audiences across our nation. The science engagement staff at the Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science Division at NASA's Johnson Space Center incorporates proven educational strategies to create, deliver, and communicate content that aims to build scientific literacy of the audiences we reach. We work closely with our subject matter experts (SMEs) to ensure that we incorporate authentic science concepts and model processes they use as part of their work into the products and content we share. As part of our goal in building scientific literacy, it is essential to make science relevant and ensure it is communicated within a suitable context so it is understandable, inspires curiosity, and engages audiences in scientific thinking. We also aim to tap into the prior knowledge of our audiences to help them build on or reconstruct their current knowledge. Additionally, we stress that scientific thinking can be thought of as a way of thinking critically about solving problems and considering a variety of approaches no matter what the topic or context.

We will share three strategies in which we approach building scientific literacy with broad audiences along with evidence of our successes. The first will focus on how we promote scientific thinking and help involved audiences build on prior knowledge through our presentation and questioning techniques used during webinar events with SMEs. The second will discuss strategies such as the use of the 5E Model of Inquiry used in the development of educational materials to help audiences build and deepen their knowledge. Thirdly, we will discuss how we share complex scientific concepts on our social media sites, aiming to translate exciting research being facilitated by our experts, yet sharing that information in a way to help build vocabulary, scientific knowledge, and build scientific literacy of our followers. Our experiences, lessons learned, and audience feedback continue to drive and refine our efforts to effectively communicate how science really works, thus building our capacity to build scientific literacy to broad audiences.