Abstrakt
The term "scientific literacy" was introduced in late 1950's in the United States by Hurd and McCurdy, in connection with the need to develop a brand new concept of education in scientific and technical disciplines. However, the concept of scientific (science) literacy only began to be promoted in European countries several decades later.
It spread and became widely used, mainly because of the international survey PISA (Programme for International student Assessment). organised since 2000 by the OECD. Today, it's possible to find many definitions of this term; all of them more or less agreethat scientific literacy is the ability t think and act as an active citizen in all matters related to natural sciences and their principles.The development of scientific literacy and verification of its achievement is a part of new curricular documents of many countries, including Czech Republic.
Complex problems ehat interconnect science knowledge while simultaneously requiring greater cognitive skills from the students seem to be the best tool for development and verificytion of this literacy. This contribution characterizes the main properties of scientific literacy and shows examples of problems that can be used for its development and verification.
These problems were a part of tests given t 18-years old students of secondary schools to solve. Their result from solving the problems are summarized in the second part of this contribution.