Ten-Year Change in the Scientific Literacy of Primary Science Teachers in China: Reflections on Training Programs and Personnel Policies

The authors acknowledge support from the "2011 Project" of Jiangsu Province titled, "Educational Innovation for Primary and Secondary Schools," which was hosted by Nanjing Normal University.

Using two rounds in 2003 and 2013 of large sample longitudinal surveys of science teachers in primary schools from 21 provinces and autonomous regions of China, results suggest that Chinese teachers' basic scientific literacy was still low with only a slight increase in the procedural knowledge of science. The evidence also suggests little increase in epistemological knowledge of science among teachers, especially concerning with the classic nature of science. Chinese teachers' non-scientific teaching behavior remained unchanged. This phenomenon associated with the relative ineffectiveness of in-service training teachers' received and with the discriminative personnel policy of recruitment and promotion for primary science teachers. The implicit cultural impact of these findings is also discussed.