Advancing Community Science Literacy

Abstract

Addressing complex global issues – such as alterations in nutrient cycles, climate change, large-scale drought, widespread erosion, and new disease vectors – require adaptive changes in our collective behavior and policies. To date, approaches to advancing science literacy to address such challenges have generally failed to produce sufficient changes in behavior at the necessary scale. We suggest that past interventions have come up short due to a primary focus on individual change, rather than change that results that accrue in the small groups that are a basis for affiliation, social and cultural capital, and the domain where impacts tend to be replicated by others. Importantly, these are the same communities where scientific literacies are negotiated and grown. The authors illustrate the unique authority and social position that museums hold to activate such small groups toward solutions at a civic scale capable of matching scale of action to need.