Science education focuses on improving the scientific literacy of students; this is a primary
goal in the twenty-first century. Recently, scientific literacy has been re-conceptualized for the
twenty-first century. There are five dimensions: habits of mind, character and values, science as
a human endeavor, meta-cognition, and scientific knowledge. Each dimension consists of three
sub-dimensions. This study explored the content of Korean, middle school science textbooks
from the view point of twenty-first century scientific literacy. We used a twenty-first century,
scientific literacy rubric. The rubric involved three dimensions: habits of mind, character and
values, and science as a human endeavor. The authors applied the rubric to twelve (six from
Grade 1 and another six from Grade 2), Korean, middle school, science textbooks. As a result,
it was noted that most of the Korean, middle school textbooks involved content concerning the
\'habits of mind\'; this included communication, collaboration, and information management.
There was not, however, sufficient content concerning \'character and values\' and science as a
human endeavor, except in one publication. As twenty-first century citizens, students need to
gain \'character and values\' and \'science as a human endeavor\' training in the science
curriculum for daily life. It is suggested, therefore, that, as twenty-first century citizenship
educators and researchers, we have to emphasis and develop curricula and teaching materials
that consider all dimensions for the re-conceptualization of scientific literacy, and not focus only
on knowledge and problem-solving. (234 words)