Denna studie fokuserar hur praktiknära forskning kan bidra till att utveckla lärarprofessionens kunskapsbas; genom att undersöka vilka slags kunskapspro-dukter som genereras i didaktisk undervisningsutvecklande forskning där lärare och forskare arbetar tillsammans. Datamaterialet består av vetenskapligt publice-rade artiklar från forskningsmiljön Stockholm Teaching & Learning Studies (STLS). Genom en innehållsanalys har fyra (i−iv) kategorier av kunskapsprodukter identi-fierats: (i) Beskrivningar av kunnanden, (ii) Undervisningsdesign, (iii) Didaktiska exempeloch (iv) Metodologiska redskap. Beskrivningar av kunnandensynliggör vad som kännetecknar kunnanden inom olika ämnesområden. Undervisningsdesign preciserar relationer mellan undervisningens utformning och elevers lärande. Didaktiska exempel innefattar rika beskrivningar av undervisning och elevers lärande som grund för didaktisk reflektion. Metodologiska redskap fokuserar på att kombinera och pröva metoder för planering och analys av undervisning. Resultatet kan ses som en typologi över vilka olika slags kunskaper som praktiknära forskning kan bidra med.

The development of students' capability to engage in scientific inquiry is part of the science curricula across the educational system. However, previous research shows that laboratory and practical work in science education do not necessarily develop the capability to engage in scientific inquiry or contribute to developing an understanding of the nature of inquiry. The purpose of this study is to explore how teaching activities can be designed with a specific focus to develop students' capability to formulate questions for scientific inquiry. 

Some science education research points to that in order for students to develop an understanding of the nature of science inquiry, teaching has to include activities explicitly focusing aspects of inquiry such as asking questions, observing and making inferences. In this study we draw on the theoretical framework of epistemic practices to analyse and design teaching with the purpose of developing students' capabilities to formulate questions for scientific inquiry. Epistemic practices refer to the ways people in a specific community propose, justify, evaluate and legitimize knowledge claims within a disciplinary framework. From this perspective, formulating scientifically researchable questions makes sense only as part of epistemic practice in relation to a motive of knowledge production. The research question is: How can epistemic practices be established in upper-secondary school science where students are invited to participate in activities of formulating researchable questions?

The study was carried out as a design-based research collaboration with a research team consisting of nine science teachers and four science education researchers. Data was collected in three cycles of design, intervention and analysis of research lessons with six classes in three different upper-secondary schools. The data consists of video-recordings of student interaction while engaging in tasks of formulating researchable scientific questions. The data is analysed using the didactical model of organizing purposes; distinguishing between overarching purposes and the student-orientated purposes emerging in interaction. The results indicate that the development of students’ capabilities to formulate researchable questions is situated in the processes of interaction with peers, and the conditions for situating the formulation of questions in a practice characterised by closeness to an epistemic object and gathering of observational data. Based on the results, we argue for a shift in science education from focusing students’ views of a generic nature of science or nature of science inquiry to focussing student participation in epistemic practices of various kinds.  

A goal for science education is to develop student capabilities to participate in scientific inquiry. This includes various aspects of inquiry; formulating scientifically researchable questions as well as planning, performing, analyzing and presenting science investigations. In science education practices, there is a tradition of using practical or laboratory work to illustrate science concepts; focussing correct answers and reproduction of ready-made scientific knowledge, rather than engaging students in inquiry. Previous research shows that inquiry teaching predominantly engage students in investigating science questions as formulated beforehand by the teacher or a textbook. Little attention has been paid to what might characterize the capability of formulating scientifically researchable questions in school. In this study we draw on a theoretical framework of epistemic practices. Epistemic practices refer to the ways people in a specific community propose, justify, evaluate and legitimize knowledge claims within a disciplinary framework. From this perspective, formulating and developing scientifically researchable questions makes sense only in relation to a motive of knowledge production. The aim of this study is to explore what might characterize students’ capabilities to formulate and develop scientifically researchable questions in upper secondary science education.

The collected data consists of video-recordings of student interaction in group-work focussing formulating and developing scientifically researchable questions. Data was collected as part of a design-based study with six classes in three different schools. The video-recordings were transcribed in verbatim and analysed by the means of qualitative content analysis. The preliminary results suggest three themes: Formulation of scientifically researchable questions as:

1) Working with the specification of the epistemic object. The theme illustrates how the students elaborated on the meaning of related scientific concepts and discussed cause and effect. 

2) Specifying researchability by focussing on how to operationalize the epistemic object. The theme illustrates how the students reformulate their questions as part of a process of discussing e.g. measurability and variables.

3) Making value-judgements of epistemic objects. The theme illustrates how the students distinguish between scientific and non-scientific questions and make value-judgements about relevance. 

The results contribute to an understanding of what the capability to engage in scientific inquiry as participation in collective epistemic work in an upper-secondary school science classroom might entail. The themes are related to the establishing of a specific scientific epistemic object. The results are discussed in relation to previous research in science education and the development of resources for teaching inquiry framing capabilities of inquiry as generic.

Previous research on science education has described various factors influencing students’ participation and produced categorizations of students based on e.g. cultural background. In this article it is argued, theoretically and empirically, that an understanding of students’ participation in science education needs to begin with an analysis of what activity students are engaged in. The aim is to explore how altering conditions of classroom work may open up opportunities for students mainly participating in an activity of education or schooling to engage in an activity of science learning. Activity is conceptualized in a Cultural-Historical Activity Theory perspective as object-oriented and transformative. Drawing on an ethnographic study in a Swedish compulsory school, a critical incident of the participation in science education of a 7th grade girl called Helena is analyzed. The results show that altered conditions of classroom practice may produce new possibilities for student participation, and point to the impossibility of determining students as ‘different kinds of students’ based on a priori categories e.g. sex, ethnicity, socio-economic background.

This paper is a commentary to a paper by Anne Solli, Frank Bach and Björn Åkerman on how students at a technical university learn to argue as biotechnologists. Solli and her colleagues report from an ethnographic study performed during the first semester of a 5-year program in biotechnology at a technical university in Sweden. Their study demonstrates how students begin to acquire ‘the right way’ of approaching the controversial issue of producing and consuming genetically modified organisms. In my response I discuss the ethnographic account of this particular educational practice in terms of social and cultural production/reproduction of a biotechnology community and how the participants (students and teaching professors) deal with the dialectic of individual and collective transformation. In the perspective of the biotechnology community, the work done by the teaching professor becomes a way of ensuring the future of the biotechnology community in terms of what values and objectives are held highly in the community of practice.

Work in the school science laboratory has been criticized for being pseudo-experimental, resulting only in a reproduction of already well-known facts and theories. The point of departure in this paper is rather what students actually have the possibility to learn. What we learn must be understood as an aspect of the activities we engage in. In this article the formation of students in the school science laboratory is analyzed within a cultural historical tradition. The research approach is ethnographic. Two science classes, grade six and seven, were studied in a Swedish midsized compulsory school during one school-year. A conclusion is that both students’ laboratory skills and their abilities to discern, classify, and represent nature and the physical reality is developed.

Border crossing provides a lens for analyzing science learning as cultural acquisition and science teaching as cultural transmission. Thus, science is deemed as culture rather than absolute truth. The generic construction of border crossing assumes the existence of borders between two (or more) distinguishable cultures/subcultures that, to a varying degree, represent obstacles for individuals to cross. The notion of border crossing has been used widely in science education research to conceptualize difficulties that students encounter in science education. In research, science classroom experiences of students and teachers have been theorized in terms of the ease with which students and teachers cross cultural borders of the science classroom. Border crossings have been categorized as smooth, manageable, hazardous, or virtually impossible (Cobern & Aikenhead, 1998). The concept of border crossing was borrowed from cultural anthropology and first applied to Western students studying science by Aikenhead (1996) with an expressed aim to encourage science educators to acknowledge inherent border crossings between students’ lifeworld subcultures and the subculture of science. The theoretical framework of cultural borders and border crossing have later been challenged for assuming subcultures as given entities and not fully taking hybridity, heterogeneity, and the situatedness of cultural practices into account (Carter, 2008).

Introduction

There is a current debate in science education on what it might mean to educate scientifically literate citizens and the possibilities of actually educating students to become “competent outsiders with respect to science” (Feinstein, 2011). One aspect of scientific literacy, which has been underscored but not sufficiently scrutinized in relation to educating “competent outsiders”, concerns the issue of becoming capable “…to evaluate the quality of scientific information on the basis of its source and the methods used to generate it”. (National Science Education Standards, 1996, p. 22). The aim of this study is to explore conditions for promoting students' abilities to engage in critical discussion in relation to science inquiry in primary science education.

In science education, on a policy level, inquiry has been attributed great promise as an instructional approach. It has been identified as a ‘key-approach’ to primary science education (Harlen, 2009; Lena, 2009), and recommended as the 'renewed pedagogy for the future of Europe' (European commission, 2007). Today, inquiry is found in curricula world-wide (Beeth et al., 2003). As educational practices, IBSE practices are inherently hybrid: products, ideas and methods of science are transformed into educational content and classroom tasks (Andrée, 2007). The aims of inquiry based science education (IBSE) are, multi-facetted involving IBSE as a method for a) making science more interesting, b) illustrating scientific concepts and c) learning about inquiry as a way of doing science. From previous studies of inquiry and practical work in science education at various levels, we know that students' work in classrooms/school laboratories cannot be equated with the work of scientists even when students follow what appears to be similar procedure (e.g. Wickman & Östman, 2002). Studies specifically focusing on learning about inquiry show that an explicit focus on teaching about the characteristics of scientific inquiry is unusual (Lager-Nyqvist, 2003; Gyllenpalm, 2010). Also, teachers do not regard learning about inquiry as equally important as traditional science subject matter (Lederman, 2007). In addition to this, teachers have rarely experienced authentic inquiry themselves (Windshitl, 2002).

Developing an inquiry literacy involves appropriation of a particular social language for critically analysing, evaluating and judging scientific investigations and conclusions (cf. Lemke, 1993). A challenge in a Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) perspective (cf. Engeström, 2001; Leontiev, 1986; Roth, Lee & Hsu, 2009) becomes to engage students in an activity that allows them to make use of relevant intellectual tools for discussing scientific investigations. This also relates to the issue of authenticity and how to create some resemblance between what students do in school science and what happens in science laboratories (Roth, Eijck, Reis & Hsu, 2008).

Method

The study was conducted as a participant-oriented action research study in collaboration with two teachers teaching science in primary school, grades 1-2 and 3, in one Swedish compulsory school over one school-year. This implies studying educational practice with a view to improving the quality of action within it (cf. Elliot, 1991). Data was collected throughout the school-year by using audio- and video recordings of collaborative teacher-researcher meetings, classroom work and collecting artifacts (e.g. work-plans, lesson plans, and student work). Data also include field-notes from informal meetings. Data is analyzed in terms of how students’ incorporate a language of inquiry in activity. The analytical framework used is Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (cf. Engeström, 2001; Leontiev, 1986; Roth, Lee & Hsu, 2009) in combination with Bakhtin’s (1986) notion of speech genres.

Expected Outcomes

The initial experiences of collaborating researchers and teachers was that it is difficult to design teaching practices that allow students to engage in open-ended inquiry sharing some resemblance to what happens in science laboratories in terms of the levels of control the students have over their conditions of work. For example, when grade 1 students were given a task to collect and investigate mosses in a nearby forest, the teacher by habit assembled the collected mosses from the students without record of whom had collected what mosses, in view that the class would share the mosses equally the following science lesson. As a consequence, the students were deprived of their own unique collection and lost the context for gathering their mosses. In the next step of inquiry students could not relate to the different milieus of the mosses. In order to push toward more authentic inquiry, researchers and teachers have discussed how to further control over inquiry to the students without loosing the objective of developing students abilities to talk about inquiry work. Further detailed analyses will focus on how students in grades 2 and 3 incorporate a language of inquiry when investigating water phase transitions.

References

Bakhtin, M. (1986). The problem of speech genres. In C. Emerson & M. Holquist (Eds.), Speech genres and other late essays (pp. 60-102). Austin: Univ. of Texas Press.

Elliot, J. (1991). Action Research for Educational Change. Open University Press, Bristol.

Engeström, Y. (2001). Expansive learning at work: toward an activity theoretical reconceptualization. Journal of Education and Work, 14(1), 133-156.

European commission (2007). Science Education Now: A Renewed Pedagogy for the Future of Europe. Expert Group Community Research Report. Directorate-General for Research Information and Communication Unit. Brussels.

Feinstein, N. (2011), Salvaging science literacy. Science Education, 95, 168–185.

Gyllenpalm, J., Wickman, P-O. & Holmgren, S-O. (2009). Teachers’ Language on Scientific Inquiry: Methods of teaching or methods of inquiry? International Journal of Science Education, 32, 1151-1172.

Harlen, W. (2009). Evaluation of inquiry-based science education pedagogy and programs. Presentation at European Conference on Primary science education Berlin, May 29 2009.

Lederman, N. (2007). Nature of science: Past, Present and Future. In N. Lederman & S. Abel (Eds.), Handbook of research on science education (pp. 831-879). Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Lemke, J. (1993). Talking science: Language, learning, and values. Norwood: Ablex.

Lena, P. (2009). A long term model for IBSE in primary schools Lessons from La main à la pâte in France. Presentation at European Conference on Primary Science Education Berlin, May 29.

Leontiev, A. (1986). Verksamhet, medvetande personlighet. Moskva/Göteborg: Progress/Fram.

Roth, W-M., Eijck,M. Reis, G. & Hsu, P-L. (2008). Authentic science revisited: In praise of diversity, heterogeneity, hybridity. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.

Roth, W-M., Lee, Y.J. & Hsu, P-L. (2009). Cultural-historical activity theory and science education. Studies in Science Education, 45, 131-167.

Windschitl, M., Thompson, J. & Braaten, M. (2008). Beyond the scientific method: Model-based inquiry as a new paradigm of preference for school science investigations. Science Education, 92, 941-967.

Work in the school science laboratory has been criticized for being pseudo-experimental, resulting only in a reproduction of already well-known facts and theories. The point of departure in this paper is rather what students actually have the possibility to learn. What we learn must be understood as an aspect of the activities we engage in. In this article the formation of students in the school science laboratory is analyzed within a cultural historical tradition. The research approach is ethnographic. Two science classes, grade six and seven, were studied in a Swedish midsized compulsory school during one school-year. A conclusion is that both students’ laboratory skills and their abilities to discern, classify, and represent nature and the physical reality is developed.

Previous research on science education has described various factors influencing students' participation and produced categorizations of students based on e.g. cultural background. In this article it is argued, theoretically and empirically, that an understanding of students‘ participation in science education needs to begin with an analysis of what activity students are engaged in. The aim is to shed light on student participation in science classroom practice and how altered conditions of classroom practice can make additional space for developing motives for learning science. Activity is conceptualized in a cultural-historical activity theoretical perspective as what transformation of objects students are engaged in. Drawing on an ethnographic study in a Swedish compulsory school, a critical incident of the participation in science education of a 7th grade girl called Helena is analyzed. The results show that altered conditions of classroom practice may produce new possibilities for student participation, and point to the impossibility of determining students as different kinds of students based on a priori categories.

Connecting science to students’ everyday-life experiences is an important theme in science education discourse. The aim of this article is to explore in what ways ‘everyday-life’ is used in the science classroom and what problems are solved through the use of ‘everyday-life’. The research approach is ethnographic. Data was gathered through participant observation during one semester in two Swedish science classes. Results show that ‘everyday-life’ is brought into the classroom and made into school tasks within different types of activities; enculturation into science, education of scientifically literate citizens and making science interesting. The results underscore the importance of understanding the use of ‘everyday-life’ in science classrooms as embedded in science classroom practice.

Introduction: Within the technology education research field, aesthetics has primarily been treated as either related to artifacts, design processes and innovation, or as related to students’ enjoyment, appreciation, and participation in technology and technology education. This study focuses on the role of aesthetics in technology learning more specifically the learning of programming. Previous research has pointed to aesthetics as important for the learning of programming, e.g., that programming activities in higher education typically involve experiences of frustration. While previous research is primarily based on student reports, there is a need for further exploration of processes of learning to program. The aim of this study is to explore the role of aesthetics for student learning to program in and what these processes may mean in relation to a disciplinary aesthetics of the technology subject.

Methods: The study was part of a design-based study with the overall purpose to develop the teaching of programming in lower secondary school. Data was collected from a programming task designed and implemented in school-year 9 (the students were aged 15–16) in Technology in two lower secondary classes. In total, three teachers participated in the implementation. The students pair-programmed Lego robots that should perform specific movements, such as following a curved line. Each group recorded their coding process along with audio, resulting in videos that documented the gradual evolution of their programs. These videos, capturing the real-time programming and associated student and teacher conversations, serve as the data for this study. In order to analyze the role of aesthetics in classroom conversations a Practical Epistemology Analysis was applied.

Results: The results show that aesthetic judgments were important for orienting learning toward (1) the movement of the robot and (2) the ways to be in the programming activity. During the programming activity, the students expressed feelings of frustration but also joy and humor.

Discussion: The findings concur with previous research and contribute to further understanding the role of negative and positive aesthetic experiences in the teaching and learning of programming. The importance of the objects of aesthetic experience found in this study are discussed as part of a disciplinary aesthetic of programming.

En klass för sig handlar om forskning och forskarutbildning vid Lärarhögskolan i Stockholm under 50 år. Syftet är att synliggöra den forskarutbildning som formellt lyder under samhällsvetenskapliga fakulteten vid Stockholms universitet men som självständigt bedrivits vid "den första och sista lärarhögskolan" mellan åren 1956 och 2007. Forskningens och forskarutbildningens bredd illustreras av en bibliografi över de 170 avhandlingar som producerats vid Lärarhögskolan. I antologin beskriver forskare framväxten av ett utbildningsvetenskapligt forskningsfält. Ett uttryck för forskningsfältets utveckling som särskilt behandlas är inrättandet av nya utbildningsvetenskapliga forskarutbildningsämnen, utöver pedagogik handlar det om didaktik, specialpedagogik och barn- och ungdomsvetenskap. Antologin innehåller också nuvarande doktoranders och nyblivna doktorers berättelser om vägen till forskarutbildning och livet som doktorand på Lärarhögskolan. Avslutningsvis innehåller boken några korta avsnitt om de fora för spridning av forskningsresultat som funnits vid Lärarhögskolan. Boken vänder sig till lärare och forskare med intresse för den utbildningsvetenskapliga forskningens framväxt i allmänhet och den utbildningsvetenskapliga forskningens framväxt vid Lärarhögskolan i Stockholm i synnerhet. Redaktörerna och författarna är - eller har varit - verksamma inom forskning och forskarutbildning vid Lärarhögskolan i Stockholm.

Ämneslärarens arbete didaktiska perspektiv är en grundbok som i första hand riktar sig till blivande ämneslärare, men kan med fördel även läsas av verksamma lärare. Boken behandlar den utbildningsvetenskapliga kärnans alla delar. 

The advancement of participatory methodologies and educational action research has raised challenges of research ethics that concern the relations between different actors. Different forms of participatory research rest on cooperation between teachers, researchers, and students in different forms of relations. The ways in which these relations are enacted are often related to research objectives, epistemology, the people involved in the study, and the context in which the study is carried out. In this chapter we seek to disentangle some ethical challenges emerging from three different teacher-researcher collaborations in science education research. What values are at stake and what are the potential tensions in attempting to secure different values? This includes the ethical implications of requiring shared responsibility between teachers and researchers in development of educational practices and knowledge generation. We discuss how different forms of teacher-researcher collaboration transform ethics and epistemology and how the ethics and epistemology become intertwined. In addition to standard ethical reflection, an ethics of participatory research in science education has to include considerations of the ontological, epistemological, and methodological values at stake.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to reflect upon demands of and possibilities for establishing a space for conducting and supporting high-quality research in schools. In the article the authors reflect upon experiences in establishing a research environment for teachers called Stockholm Teaching & Learning Studies (STLS). The article focusses some of the tensions that have been emerging in attempting to build an infrastructure for teacher-driven research and discusses the transformative potential of those tensions. Design/methodology/approach The article draws on the authors' experiences in establishing STLS as a research environment for teachers by drawing on a framework of cultural-historical activity theory. The article applies the notions of contradictions and tensions as driving forces for development of activity. Findings The specific tensions that have been negotiated in the establishment of STLS are tensions between developing public knowledge vs local knowledge, tensions in knowledge cultures between oral and text-based ways of sharing knowledge, tensions in research interests and tensions in ownership. These tensions relate to knowledge production as embedded in institutional life and constrained by institutional boundaries in contemporary society. Originality/value Today, there is a growing amount of collaborative research that connects elementary and secondary teachers in research projects with university-based researchers. However, this does not guarantee projects that will address everyday problems of teachers or that teachers will be acknowledged as researchers in the end.

Satsningar för att öka ungdomars intresse för naturvetenskap och naturvetenskapliga utbild-ningar görs av aktörer, med olika agenda och ekonomiska resurser. Aktuell forskning visar att ungdomars val av utbildning också är en fråga om identitet. Frågan är därför i vilken utsträck-ning olika rekryteringsförsök faktiskt öppnar för att naturvetenskap kan få plats i fler ung-domars identitetsskapande jämfört med idag. Syftet i artikeln är att, utifrån ett identitets-perspektiv, problematisera satsningar för att öka ungdomars intresse för naturvetenskapliga utbildningar. I artikeln analyseras exempel på två svenska rekryteringsförsök. Gemensamt för rekryteringsförsöken är att de innehåller filmer som riktar sig till elever i grundskolans senare del. Det första initiativet är

Kemi-Julkalendern – en webbkalender (ett filmat experiment/dag), producerad och publicerad av Lunds Tekniska högskola. Initiativet är ett exempel på hur vetenskapssamhället självt försöker öka ungdomars intresse för naturvetenskaplig utbildning. Det andra initiativet är en kampanj från Teknikdelegationen. Delegationen är tillsatt av regeringen och kampanjen är ett exempel på ett politiskt initiativ som också engagerat industrirepresentanter. Kampanjen, som består av nio filmer, har syftet att få fler ungdomar att välja gymnasiets naturvetenskapliga program. Filmerna analyseras med utgångspunkt i Roberts kunskapsemfaser (Roberts, 1982; Roberts, 1998). Kunskapsemfaserna har tidigare använts vid läromedelsanalyser och läroplansanalyser. Här använder vi emfaserna för att analysera de budskap, om varför naturvetenskaplig kunskap/utbildning kan vara eftersträvansvärd, som förekommer i filmerna. I analysen identifieras både dominerande emfaser och emfaser som saknas. Dessa diskuteras i relation till elevers identitet, intresse och val. De preliminära resultaten visar att kemikalendern, genom filmernas "setting" och kommunicerade kunskaps-emfaser, bekräftar en stereotyp bild av naturvetare. Den dominerande emfasen är "Kunna för-klara själv". I filmerna visar en kemistudent hur han, tack vare kemikunskaper, kan manipulera och behärska föremål så att ovanliga och konstiga saker händer – primärt i syfte att ha roligt. Genom filmerna bjuds tittaren in och får tillgång till en del av den speciella kunskap kemisten besitter. I Teknikdelegationens filmer dominerar em-fasen "Den säkra grunden". Denna kommuniceras bl.a. genom att kända personer, som inte arbetar med natur-vetenskap, berättar att Nv-programmet ger en bred bas för fortsatta studier, en god grund för framtida arbete och tillträde till åtråvärda gemenskaper. Budskap om varför kunskap i och om naturvetenskap skulle kunna vara intressant eller användbart saknas, däremot nämns mate-matik och problemlösningsförmåga. Några säger också explicit att deras val av naturvetenskapsprogrammet inte handlade om ett intresse för naturvetenskap i sig. Istället uttrycks i filmerna intressen som fotboll, politik, teknik, musik och djur. Det ena av de två rekryterings-försöken bekräftar i stort en stereotyp bild av naturvetare, medan det andra undviker stereo-typen. Båda initiativen saknar t.ex. emfasen Naturvetenskap och beslutsfattande vilken kunde haft potential att attrahera ungdomar som vill göra något av skillnad för samhället. Inget av initiativen erbjuder sätt att förhålla sig till naturvetenskap som utgår från ett sådant intresse.

För att öppna upp för att fler ungdomar ska kunna se sig själva välja naturvetenskaplig utbildning bör rekryteringsförsök ta utgångspunkt i hur människor, utifrån olika utgångspunkter och positioner i samhället finner kunskap i och om naturvetenskap meningsfull.

Det finns många olika aktörer som engagerar sig i skolans undervisning i naturvetenskap och teknik – inte minst från industrin. I denna artikel presenterar vi resultat från vårt forskningsprojekt som visar att detta kan innebära intressekonflikter mellan privata och allmänna intressen. Vi presenterar även ett ramverk från samma projekt som kan fungera som stöd för lärare för att göra didaktiska överväganden kring denna typ av undervisningsresurser.

In science education, critical discussions on the engagement of industrial actors in STEM education are scarce. In this study, we take the perspective that industrial STEM education initiatives are an arena for governing STEM education. The aim is to contribute to a critical discussion on the involvement of industrial actors in STEM education by scrutinizing how they describe their engagement. More specifically, we look at the discursive repertoires industrial actors put forward as rationales for engaging in STEM education initiatives. The data consist of web materials wherein industrial actors describe and justify their engagements. We identify the following interpretative repertoires used by industrial actors when justifying their engagement in said initiatives: a) Securing competent labour, b) Securing economic growth, c) Improving the public image—marketing, d) Contributing to a bright future, e) Increasing interest in STEM, f) Increasing knowledge in and of STEM and g) Empowering young people. The repertoires are discussed in light of potential tensions between public and private good. The notion of ‘boundary repertoires’ is introduced to discuss repertoires which can be adapted across discursive practices and which afford industrial actors possibilities for speaking to a varied audience—shareholders as well as teachers.

This article reports from a study of what messages concerning industry–society–environment are communicated to secondary students when they participate in webinars with representatives from the petrochemical industry. The webinars are conceptualised as part of an arena for governing science education and the messages as companion meanings. Empirically, the study is set in a context of online webinars on the topic of careers in the petrochemical industry. The webinars target students across the European Union (EU). The analysis reveals two main themes of companion meanings concerning what relations between industry–society–environment are communicated: a) the petrochemical industry as safeguarding modern life, and b) the petrochemical industry as essential for the solving of environmental problems. The companion meanings conveyed are not at all neutral but instead a means to influence the attitudes and choices of young people. The themes are discussed in relation to the overall democracy and citizenship aims of education. That the webinars claim to address the topic of careers and that they are part of an initiative sanctioned by a governmental authority (the EU) might contribute to teachers and students lowering their guard in relation to potentially biased messages. 

In many Western societies, there is a concern about the tendency of young people not choosing Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education and occupations. In response, different initiatives have been launched. If one believes that science should have a place in more young people's lives, an important question is to what extent recruitment campaigns communicate messages that open up for STEM education to become relevant in young people's identity formation. Here, we analyse a Swedish government-initiated, primarily Internet-based recruitment attempt (‘The Broad Line Campaign’) aimed at increasing the number of young people choosing the natural science programme in upper secondary school. The campaign is based on marketing principles and deliberately draws on identity issues. The data analysed consists of campaign films and written resources describing the campaign. Data are analysed by use of the constant comparative approach in order to produce categories describing different messages about why to engage in STEM education. These messages are then analysed from an identity perspective using the concept of subjective values. Our results show that the messages communicated in the Broad Line campaign emphasise utility value, attainment value and relative cost rather than interest-enjoyment. The campaign communicates that the natural science programme is to be associated with a high attainment value without establishing relations to the field of science. Finally, potential consequences of the communicated messages in the campaign are discussed in light of previous research.

Many different actors, including government, academy and industry, are engaged in school- and recruitment-STEM-initiatives. The aim of this article is to shed light on industrial initiatives, what actors are involved and what different repertoires are being used when industrial actors describe the initiatives and their engagement in them. The data collected consists of web-materials where industrial actors describe their engagement in STEM-initiatives and provide reasons for their engagement. The method for analysis is discursive psychology. The results show that a variety of constellations of industrial actors are engaged in STEM-initiatives and that the initiatives draw on a variety of discursive resources, e.g. competition resources, ‘fun’ teaching resources, role-model resources, industrial owned upper secondary schools, and industrial visits for school classes. In our analysis we identify the following interpretative repertoires which are used when the industrial actors describe the reasons for their engagement in the initiatives: 1) The securing competent labor repertoire, 2) The bright future for the world repertoire, 3) The Securing economic growth for the country or region (e.g. in competition with others) repertoire, 4) The increasing knowledge of the importance of science repertoire, 5) The general increase interest in science repertoire, and 6) The increasing knowledge in science repertoire. The use of these repertoires, and the fact that they work in relation to schools/teachers, are in the article discussed with a starting point in a combination of two prevailing discourses in the society – the “STEM-crisis”-discourse and the “Science as a savior” discourse.

Many different actors, including government, academy and industry, are engaged in school- and recruitment-STEM-initiatives. The aim is to shed light on industrial initiatives, what actors are involved and what different repertoires are being used when motivating engagement in STEM-initiatives. The data collected consists of web-materials where industrial actors describe their engagement in STEM-initiatives and provide reasons for their engagement. The method for analysis is discursive psychology. The results show that a variety of constellations of industrial actors are engaged in STEM-initiatives and that the initiatives draw on a variety of discursive resources. In our analysis we identify the following interpretative repertoires: 1) The securing competent labor repertoire, 2) The developing specific job skills or competences repertoire, 3) The bright future repertoire, and 4) The general increase interest in science repertoire. The results of this study may contribute to the self-reflection of industrial actors on how the choice of resources and repertoires may afford and constrain possibilities for breaking the cultural patterns of selection to STEM education. 

Young people's interest in pursuing science and science-intense educations has been expressed as a concern in relation to societal, economic and democratic development by various stakeholders (governments, industry and university). From the perspective of the scientific communities, the issues at stake do not necessarily correspond to the overall societal aims. Rather, initiatives to recruit young people to science are also ways for the scientific community to engage in the social and cultural reproduction of itself. For a community to survive and produce a future, it needs to secure regeneration of itself in succeeding generations. The aim of this study is to, from a perspective of social and cultural production/reproduction, shed light on an initiative from the scientific community to recruit young people to science education. This is a case study of one recruitment campaign called the Chemistry Advent calendar. The calendar consists of 25 webcasted films, produced and published by the science/technology faculty at a university. The analysed data consist of the films and additional published material relating to the campaign such as working reports and articles published about the campaign. The analysis focussed on what messages are communicated to potential newcomers. The messages were categorised by means of a framework of subjective values. The results are discussed both from a perspective of how the messages mirror traditions and habits of the scientific community, and in relation to research on students' educational choices.

This article focuses on the participation of industrial and corporate actors in science and technology education in Sweden. Opening up schools for the participation of industrial actors may be seen as a means of making education more connected to society. However, it may also contribute to the emergence of tensions related to ensuring values of objectivity and neutrality. The aim is to investigate how teachers deal with commercial interest, bias and partiality in collegial evaluations of industry-produced teaching resources. The data consist of focus group interviews with teachers, which were analysed using an ecological perspective on teacher agency. The teachers’ evaluations of the teaching resources focussed: (1) The legitimacy of evaluating teaching resources in terms of bias. (2) The value of a resource in terms of correctness and versatility, (3) Acceptable ways in which commercial interests are communicated (undercurrent messages, logos and advertisement), (4) Bias in light of different educational aims, and (5) Upholding neutrality versus imparting specific values and behaviours. The results are discussed with regard to the teacher agency achieved in evaluations concerning commercial interests, bias and partiality. 

Many Western societies have a tendency to talk about how schools are failing in the science subjects. School science is often discussed as outdated, not interesting enough for young people and non-effective for the students’ learning. This discourse opens up for external actors such as industrial actors and NGOs to engage in the teaching of science. One example of this is when these actors provide teaching materials. Thus, “statework”, in terms of educational governance, becomes distributed within public and private networks. One example which is analysed in this chapter can be found with the web-based calculators from the environmental organisation, WWF, and the energy company, E.ON; both are used for calculating ecological footprints. The aim is to analyse what political rationalities are invited into classrooms through these ecological footprint calculators and by what means. Our analysis targets how a specific kind of citizen is “made up” through a “centre of calculations”, and what political ideology influences the making of a sustainable citizen. This is achieved through looking into how the desirable citizen is governed through the technologies of accounting, debt and ethics. Through the accuracy of numbers and the bookkeeping of debt, the calculators produce a specific ethical approach. As a result, they suggest that becoming a responsible person is achieved through individual consumption choices rather than taking the issues to the political level. This distributed statework opens up for neoliberal economic and ideological interests to enter the classroom. We claim that it is of the utmost importance that teachers and educational policy-makers be made aware of the governing elements behind the teaching materials provided by external actors.

Inquiry has been identified as a 'key-approach' and recommended as an important pedagogy to improve primary science education in Europe. Inquiry is also a key component in the US national science education standards. In Sweden, inquiry pedagogy in primary science has been introduced through a large curriculum program called NTA (Science and Technology for all). The aim of this paper is to shed light on what inquiry based science education (IBSE) practices are emerging in Swedish primary schools through the introduction of the NTA-program and what activities students are engaging in, in these practices. In particular we focus on ways of working with 'what is already known' which is held to be a central aspect to IBSE in e.g. the definition of inquiry in the US national science education standards. The research questions investigated are: In what actions do students engage in when working with ‘what is already known’ in IBSE practice? How is 'what is already known' acted with in practice? Data was collected, during a 10-week-period using video- and audiotape recordings of classroom work, in two 6^th grade classes where teachers and students worked with an NTA-unit called 'the Chemistry of food'. Our analysis is conceptualized within a cultural-historical activity-theoretical perspective. Results show that students participate in three different actions: A) separation of tasks, B) playing the lottery and C) challenging test results with ‘what is already known’. These different actions involve different types of use of 'what is already known' , and the actions correspond to, and acquire meaning in relation to, different goals. Common to the different ways of working is that we can discern two different types of ‘what is already known’: (1) referring to facts, and (2) making use of ideas about science culture.

In science education, students sometimes create and engage in spontaneous science-oriented play where ideas about science and scientists are put to use. However, in previous research, little attention has been given to the role of informal spontaneous play in school science classrooms. We argue that, in order to enhance our understanding of learning processes in school science practices, research that investigates play as an aspect of everyday culture is needed. The aim of this paper is to explore students’ informal play as part of activity in lower secondary school science. The empirical study was conducted in two Swedish compulsory schools in grade 6. Data were collected throughout a teaching unit called ‘The Chemistry of Food’ during a 10-week period using video and audiotape recordings of classroom work. Our analyses show that the play students engage in involves the transformations of given tasks. We find that students’ spontaneous collective play offers opportunities for them to explore the epistemic values and norms of science and different ways of positioning in relation to science. Our findings contribute to the understanding of how learning in the school science classroom is socially and culturally–historically embedded and how individual students’ engagement through play may transform and transcend existing classroom practices.

Idén att bygga på elevers tidigare erfarenheter och kunskaper har varit betydelsefulla i det som benämnts ‟konstruktivistisk undervisning‟ i naturvetenskapliga ämnen. Ett råd till lärare har varit att ta elevers tidigare erfarenheter och kunskaper som utgångspunkt för undervis-ningen. Dessa idéer är framträdande i svenska NO-läromedel och upplägg för praktiskt under-sökande arbetssätt (t.ex. NTA). Syftet med detta paper är att problematisera hur elever använ-der ‟vad de redan vet‟ i praktiskt undersökande arbete i NO-undervisnings-praktiken. Inne-börder av att ta utgångspunkt i elevers tidigare efterenheter eller vad de vet om något är inte okomplicerat. Tidigare studier pekar på att det för olika skolämnen utvecklats olika skoläm-nespraktiker. Användning av det som ibland kallas vardagserfarenheter blir begripligt utifrån den specifika skolämnespraktiken snarare än utifrån en vardagskontext. Tidigare forskning om användning av vardag och tidigare erfarenheter i skolan har dock inte fokuserat på vad elever gör när de gör bruk av egna erfarenheter och kunskaper i praktiskt undersökande arbete och i vilken utsträckning bruk av egna erfarenheter bidrar till elevers lärande i linje med det avsedda undervisningsinnehållet i praktiskt undersökande arbete. Vi redovisar här en studie av hur elever arbetar med ‟vad de vet om fett‟ inom ramen för arbete med uppdraget "Matens kemi" i NTA-programmet. NTA (

Naturvetenskap och teknik för alla) är ett program för prak-tiskt undersökande arbete med naturvetenskap och teknik i grundskolans tidigare år. I arbetet med matens kemi inleds varje avsnitt med att eleverna ska diskutera ‟vad de vet om‟ olika näringsämnen och därefter undersöka i vilka olika sorters livsmedel som detta näringsämne finns. I det avsnitt som handlar om fett undersöker eleverna om det finns fett i t.ex. mjölk, vatten, äpple, mjöl o.s.v. Studien bygger på analys av transkriberade ljud- och video-inspel-ningar av 12 elevgrupper i två klasser, på vardera skolan, som arbetar med lektionen om fett i uppdraget "Matens kemi". Det empiriska materialet analyseras i ett verksamhets-teoretiskt perspektiv. Resultaten visar att eleverna gör bruk av ‟vad de vet om fett‟ på olika sätt, som del av olika verksamheter. Vi urskiljer tre verksamheter som svarar mot olika ledande motiv: ut-bildning, naturvetenskaplig enkulturering och sociala relationer. Med de exempel vi lyfter fram i analysen visar vi att hur och vilka tidigare erfarenheter elever använder i arbetet med fett inte bara handlar om vilka erfarenheter elever har i relation till fett utan vilka verksamhe-ter eleverna deltar i. Elevernas bruk av ‟vad de vet om fett‟ i relation till olika motiv känne-tecknas av olika tillgängliga resurser, olika gemenskaper, olika arbets-delning mellan elever och elever-lärare samt olika normer/regler för att åstadkomma det som eftersträvas. Samman-fattningsvis visar studien att det inte möjligt att urskilja elevers tidigare erfarenheter i relation till ett naturvetenskapligt fenomen eller begrepp som något i sig som kan utgöra utgångspunkt för undervisningen.

Connecting students’ worlds, knowledge and experiences with school science has been a central issue in science education research. Here, we conceptualize processes of drawing on students’ personal experiences and knowledge in terms of ‘funds of knowledge’. We scrutinize two sixth grade classroom practices where the inquiry curriculum reform effort, Naturvetenskap och teknik för alla (NTA), is used. This curriculum material explicitly incorporates ideas of ‘learning science from experience’. Our aim is to contribute to a discussion on what conditions of inquiry based science education (IBSE) practices may open up opportunities for science to become personally relevant to students. The  research question investigated is: What do students do when they draw on funds of knowledge that are related to students’ memberships and experiences out-of-school in IBSE pratices? We then use Cultural-Historical Activity Theory framework to analyze how students’ actions of drawing on different funds of knowledge gain meaning in relation to different cultural-historical motives. Our findings indicate that students, when positioning themselves as part of different communities in relation to different goals and overall motives, make use of quite different funds of knowledge. Finally, we discuss possibilities for expanding and acknowledging students’ funds of knowledge when working with  investigations in the science classroom.

In science education students sometimes engage in imaginary science-oriented play where ideas about science and scientists are put to use. Through play, children interpret their experiences, dramatize, give life to and transform what they know into a lived narrative. In this paper we build on the work of Vygotsky on imagination and creativity. Previous research on play in primary and secondary school has focused on play as a method for formal instruction rather than students’ spontaneous informal play. Our aim is to explore students’ informal play as part of activity in lower secondary school science. The empirical study was conducted as part of a larger study on learning, narrative knowing and remembering in inquiry based science education in two Swedish compulsory schools. Data were collected during 10 weeks using video- and audiotape recordings. The results show that the studied classroom practices offer students a variety of resources that may be used to engage in spontaneous play with science. We discern two categories of play: role-playing and game-playing involving transformations of classroom tasks and opening up for different social positioning in relation to science. Implications for teaching science is that teachers, in order to promote students learning about science as a cultural endeavor and about themselves in relation to science and scientist communities may encourage students’ informal play.

In science education students sometimes engage in imaginary science-oriented play where ideas about science and scientists are put to use. Through play, children interpret their experiences, dramatize, give life to and transform what they know into a lived narrative. In this paper we build on the work of Vygotsky on imagination and creativity. Previous research on play in primary and secondary school has focused on play as a method for formal instruction rather than students’ spontaneous informal play. Our aim is to explore students’ informal play as part of activity in lower secondary school science. The empirical study was conducted as part of a larger study on learning, narrative knowing and remembering in inquiry based science education in two Swedish compulsory schools. Data were collected during 10 weeks using video- and audiotape recordings. Our analyses of play show that the students step in and out of play when engaging in task completion. Play offers opportunities for sense-making, opposition and exploration of ways of enacting science identities. Implications for teaching science are that teachers, in order to promote students’ learning about science as a cultural endeavor and students’ learning about themselves in relation to science and scientist communities, may encourage students’ informal play.

How citizenship education should be designed and what it should aim for is debated. The Swedish national curriculum describes the democratic mission for the compulsory school as imparting respect for human rights, fundamental democratic values and preparing students to responsibly participate in societal life. This mission is to be implemented in all school subjects. Here, we aim to shed light on how these ideas are expressed in the curriculum documents for science education in compulsory school in terms of argumentation and critique. We perform an analysis of the national syllabuses and commentary materials and also discuss the results from educational philosophy perspectives. First, we scrutinize the idea of developing students’ abilities to engage in argumentation, argumentation as means to reach consensus and argumentation as dissensus and agonism from a radical democratic perspective. Second, we scrutinize the idea of critique as expressed in the documents in relation to what has been described as a neo-liberal discourse of independence and integrity. We summarize our findings in what we suggest to be a tension between consensus and agonism. We point to affordances and constraints in the curriculum documents concerning possibilities of bringing together argumentation and critique in what we call critical deliberative education.

A central issue for educational research is how education may contribute to the personal development of children. A condition for developing such classroom practices is that access points to shared experiences are established in the classroom. The aim of this contribution is to illustrate how remembering can be understood as a situated and transformational activity shared by students and teachers in finding access points to scientific literacy. We ask how shared remembering functions as a pedagogical arrangement to make teaching experiences in science available for students’ continued reflection. Memories are often treated in education as entities being stored in the brain and which can be retrieved on demand. When approached from a sociocultural, situative and pragmatic perspective, memory does not come ready-made. Here, we draw on a six-week Chemistry project in primary school. We analyse one episode from a teacher-led group conversation where students report their ‘inquiry-home-work’ on the water-solubility of different food. This pedagogical sequence is an example of an arrangement with a purpose to make inquiry aspects of scientific literacy available to students through remembering. We find that the teacher draws on a broad repertoire of ways to construct a collective narrative of inquiry. The remembering requires joint negotiation of what is to be remembered. This joint negotiation has conceptual consequences in that it is simultaneously a negotiation of what instances qualify as examples of the phenomena of solubility and of what is necessary to make explicit in order to reflect upon the qualities of inquiry work.

This article reports from an empirical study on the affordances and constraints for using staged socio-political debates for authentic summative assessment of scientific literacy. The article focuses on conditions for student participation and what purposes emerge in student interaction in a socio-political debate. As part of the research project, a socio-political debate was designed for assessing student competences of scientific literacy in classroom practices. The debate centred on a fictive case about a lake where a decline in the yield of fish had been established. The students were assigned the task of participating in the debate from appointed roles as different stakeholders. Data were collected with video recordings of the enacted student debates. Student participation was analysed with the theoretical framework of communities of practice. The results show that multiple conflicting purposes of the socio-political debate as an assessment task emerged. The emergent purposes were: (I) putting scientific knowledge on display versus staying true to one’s role, (II) putting scientific knowledge on display versus expressing social responsibility, (III) putting scientific knowledge on display versus winning the debate, (IV) using sources tactically versus using sources critically. As these purposes emerged in classroom practice, tensions between different ways of enacting participation in the debates became manifest. Based on these findings, this paper discusses the affordances and constraints for using a socio-political debate for classroom-based assessment of scientific literacy and argumentation in terms of validity, reliability and affordability.

Curriculumreforms in Sweden have gradually shifted science education syllabi towards amore citizen-oriented science. Swedish science teachers have expresseduncertainty how to assess new syllabi standards concerning communication,source critique and decision-making. Research indicates that assessmentmoderation meetings, where teachers meet and assess together, are more helpfulto teachers in development of a joint assessment practice than externallyproduced tests. This article reports from an intervention study thatinvestigates the possibilities for using assessment moderation meetings forexpanding teachers’ assessment repertoires for challenging aspects of thescience subjects’ syllabi. Assessment moderation meetings were studied in twoschools with different discourses for assessing science and analysed with thetheory of expansive learning. Teachers for one of the schools constantlyelicited science and interpreted students’ answers, whereas the teachers fromthe other school demanded that their students elaborated scientific aspects intheir replies and expressed themselves clearly. The teachers in both schoolsalso expanded their assessment practices in different directions depending onhow they identified contradictions between prior assessment practices and newdemands. The meetings forced the teachers to listen to the multiple voices inthe group and negotiate collective changes in the assessment practice. However,teachers could choose not to follow the expansions of their colleagues.