The Advanced Certificate in Education Programme was launched in 2002 at the School of Education, Training and Development, University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, in an attempt to upgrade and retrain science educators, given the drastic shortage of qualified science educators in South Africa. This research study investigated the development of scientific literacy within a group of fifteen educators during the first semester of their two-year Advanced Certificate in Education Programme. The study focused on scientific literacy and the relationship between language comprehension skills, readability and scientific literacy. This study aimed to examine whether the Natural Sciences and Biological Sciences module of the Advanced Certificate in Education Programme was effective in raising the level of scientific literacy of educators. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were employed in the collection of data. Students wrote a pre-test at the beginning of the first semester and the same test was written as the post-test at the end of the first semester. Semi-structured interviews with tutors were also conducted. Responses of students in the Student Evaluation Questionnaire, given at the end of their first year of study, were analysed to ascertain their perceptions about the tutors, their knowledge and understanding of the content and skills of the modules and the learning material. The questions used in the achievement test were adapted from the question bank of the Science Achievement Test used for Grade 8 learners in the Third International Mathematics and Science Study-Repeat in 1998/1999. The same achievement test was used in the pre-test and post-test, using questions from the Life Science and Scientific Inquiry and the Nature of Science content areas. The results from this research study indicated that although the level of scientific literacy of educators improved, it was not statistically significant. The study also highlights that language and comprehension skills and inability of students to express their answers in writing hampered their performance in the scientific literacy test. This was demonstrated by the significant positive correlation between language comprehension and readability with scientific literacy. Specific areas of conceptual difficulty were also highlighted in this study. Implications of these findings for further research and delivery of mixed-mode programmes are discussed. / Thesis (M.Ed.) - University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2003

Many theories on the nature of science and the nature of learning have been proposed. In particular, two theoretical orientations have been identified as having a decisive impact on activities in the school science classroom, namely "Inductivism" and "Constructivism". Inductivism views observations as objective, facts as constants and knowledge as being obtained from a fixed external reality. The constructivist view sees all knowledge as "reality" reconstructed in the mind of the learner. Each view predisposes certain orientations towards the science curriculum and within it particularly to assessment. It is postulated that teachers' views on science will influence how they teach and assess it. An "inductivist" teacher is more likely to reward certain approved responses from learners whereas a "constructivist" teacher is more likely to attend to learners' unique observations as evidence of their thinking. In this study a questionnaire was developed in an attempt classify science teachers according to their views on the nature of science and learning, and during this process encourage them to reflect on these views. It is hoped that the instrument could measure any changes in teacher's views as a result of the teachers becoming more reflective practitioners over time. Research indicates that the majority of teachers have a predominantly inductivist view of science. The study confirmed the results of other researchers by showing that a majority of non-tertiary science educators could be classified as being strongly inductivist. However, the overall proportion of these teachers was not as high as expected. Of possible concern was the indication that the strongly constructivist group showed very strong inductivist tendencies when assessing written tests which involved pupils' responses to laboratory observations.