ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Educ.
Sec. STEM Education
Volume 10 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/feduc.2025.1556464
Learning to Support Science: Gender Differences in How Scientific Literacy Mediates Formal Education's Effect on U.S. Adults' Public Support for Science
Provisionally accepted
- 1University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, United States
- 2Nova Southeastern University, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, United States
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Scientific literacy is targeted by the knowledge deficit model, which predicts that increased scientific literacy improves public support for science. The model, in part, assumes formal education drives scientific knowledge, which, in turn, drives support for science. To date, though, this relationship is unclear, and research shows that, while formal education is associated with adults' public support for science, scientific literacy maintains only a small relationship with support for science, one that may differ by gender. Using a conditional process analysis, we drew on 2018 General Social Survey data to examine whether scientific literacy mediates education's effects on support for science and whether this relationship differs by gender. We found that for men, education improved support for science only through scientific literacy gains, whereas for women, education improved support for science regardless of scientific literacy.Implications for theory, research, practice, and policy are discussed.
Keywords: formal education, Scientific literacy, public support for science, gender, STEM - Science Technology Engineering Mathematics
Received: 06 Jan 2025; Accepted: 19 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Roessger and Greenleaf. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Kevin Mark Roessger, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, United States
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