How to teach functional scientific literacy? Be sociocultural, but don’t forget the basics

This commentary is a response to a comment made in this journal by Lederman et al., titled ‘Attention science educators, we have a problem: lack of global functional scientific literacy’. Lederman et al. describe a lack of satisfying results in disseminating scientific literacy among the general public, and propose to mend this issue by teaching students what they refer to as the ‘essence of science’. In my response, I explain why teaching more or better knowledge is not a bullet-proof solution, and refer to other approaches that advocate for students’ engagement with science in contextualised situations. I present a theoretical perspective that supports these approaches, based on sociocultural theories of literacy, which may also explain why people seem to fail in appropriately applying scientific literacy. I conclude in pointing out a shortcoming of the sociocultural approach in teaching foundational science concepts, and suggest that science education research should work towards developing pedagogical methods that integrate learning of foundational and contextualised science.