It has earlier been shown on a group level that it is difficult for 9th grade students (15-16 years old) in a Swedish school to understand how water is transported in the human body. The detailed analysis of five Swedish students in the 9th and final year of compulsory school concerning their ideas about water transportation is presented here. The empirical data consists of drawings, answers to a questionnaire with both open ended and multiple-choice questions, and student interviews. The analysis shows that all the students struggle to produce explanations involving the three organ systems: digestive, blood and excretion systems and they seem to use a variety of explanatory models as basis for their reasoning. Possible ways of understanding this are discussed together with implications for future teaching

The aim of the research project is to analyze and describe how pre-school teachers during an in-service training period develop theoretical knowledge about focusing the content when planning for teaching science in pre-school. The variation theory is used for analysis as well as for the planning for teaching in pre-school. The theory can be described in terms of learning object, critical aspects, discernment, simultaneity and differences. 30 pre-school teachers from nine different municipalities participated in the project. The empirical material consists of a questionnaire as the preschool teachers answered in the beginning and in the end of the training period and of group reports. The results can be discussed as a number of critical aspects in relation to teachers'learning as: ways of understand the concept of variation, to discern the object of learning and to discern o shared space of learning.

In connection to the astronaut Christer Fuglesang’s space flight, different stakeholders have expressed a hope that this event will increase the interest among youths for science and technology studies. The modernistic and technique positive discourse that is used is however not unproblematic in this situation. In the article this is exemplified with students’ views concerning the possibility that humans in the future will be able to live on other planets. This is something that, during an interview, was mentioned by Fuglesang as the main reason for space flights.

Identifying and building on children’s questions and everyday situations is often discussed as a basis for science learning in preschool. With a starting point in such questions and situations, children should be given the opportunity to investigate and search for answers. What questions and situations do preschool teachers identify as possible bases for science learning? What science content is present? To what extent are the questions possible to investigate for children and preschool teachers through experiments and observations or theoretical studies? The paper presents children’s questions and everyday situations that might form the basis for science learning, as identified by preschool teachers taking part in a science in-service training course. Based on a content analysis, we discuss possibilities and difficulties that preschool teachers may face in their practice when they try to use these questions and situations as a basis for science learning.

In 2010 the Swedish national curriculum was revised and learning goals concerning chemistry and physics were introduced. That has induced a need for further understanding of teaching and learning of specific content in preschool. Focus in this article is how physics content is constructed as an object of learning during preschool teachers’ planning of teaching. The result of a phenomenographic analysis focusing themes of the conversation concerning the intended object of learning reveals a complex process. Occurrences in the activities with the children, available tools at the preschool, the preschool teachers’ perceptions of the mission and understanding of the learning object, contribute to the construction of the learning object. All these aspects are discussed and implications for preschool practice are suggested.

In order to be able to help students to read nature and to get an ability to discern both biodiversity in different contexts and changes in the environment we need to investigate how they experience biodiversity and how they discern different components in an ecosystem. Therefore, we undertook an interview-study of fifteen 10-12 year old students’ experiences of biodiversity and how they discerned organisms in different ecosystems. We analysed how they described the organisms and how they referred to experiences from everyday life. After two years we interviewed the students about what they said in the initial interview. Experiences of biodiversity at an early age seemed to be important for the future development of their understanding. It is important, both to give children early experiences of biodiversity in nature and to take students’ early ideas into consideration in teaching for lifelong learning and for a sustainable future.

This paper presents results from a longitudinell study of students in compulsary school in Sweden. The project started in 1997 when the students were about six years old, and finished in 2006 when they left compulsary school. The aim of the study is to follow individual students’ development of conceptions about evaporation during their years in school. Teaching episodes focused on water, and it´s changes of state connected to everyday phenomena have been taught. Early in the study a simplified particle model was introduced in order to see if this would help the students in their explanations. The students were interviewed before and after the teaching interventions and the explanations were analysed in order to find a comprehensive description of each student. Here we describe the use of the early introduced particle concept and how it effects the students’ explanations of evaporation and their uses of explanatory models.

This article explores experienced primary teachers views on teaching for ‘reading nature’. The concept ‘reading nature’ has to do with an ability to recognise organisms and relate them to material cycling and energy flow in the specific habitat which is to be read. It has to do with the natural world that we face outside and the tools we have are our experiences from previous learning situations both in and out-of-doors. The teachers were asked to comment on the content of a CD-ROM with teaching sequences from a primary class studying a river ecosystem. Perceptions that teachers held were found to be supportive but complex and varied regarding the possibilities and advantages of implementing this type of teaching design in the everyday classroom. The paper finishes by identifying some implications for teacher training to support fieldwork and ecological literacy in primary schools in the future.

This research deals with learning in science, including learning in environment for sustainable development. These are obligatory perspectives in science as well as in other school subjects. The study, concerning 28 pupils nine years of age, started in a city in southern Sweden, in 2003. In order to analyse the pupils’ development of concepts in science and in environment for sustainable development, I have videotaped sequences from the pupils’ science lessons and followed up with questionnaires and questions in interviews. Stimulated recall is used to find the teacher’s intentions and reactions on the outcome of the lessons. The results are analysed according to the Earth System Science (ESS) model. It is a model, which describes the relations and interactions between the natural spheres: atmosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere as well as biosphere, including man, and technosphere/anthroposphere. The concepts found among the pupils in this study are the hydrological cycle; life; soil; water in every day life; pollution; non-polluting busses as well as waste; collecting batteries; corrosion; greenhouse and the increasing greenhouse effect. Some concepts e.g. the hydrological cycle, life and soil can from the beginning be classified as concepts used in science, but also to describe what happens in the environment. Concepts as pollution; non-polluting busses; collecting batteries; corrosion; greenhouse and increasing greenhouse effect are used by the pupils to express relations and interactions in and between the natural spheres including man. The relation between man and nature is for the pupils an area of conflicts through the entire study when the pupils from a scientific approach will be aware of the impact on living ecosystems including themselves, today and in the future. The longitudinal approach resulted in important findings regarding the changes in the pupils’ answers over time. The concepts are often connected to each other in a more or less complicated network, ‘concepts webs’. My obtained results indicate that the Socratic dialogue is a possible and successful method to use for the development of pupils’ concepts in environmental questions and issues. Another finding in the study, which ended in 2006, is how different methods, e.g. Play and learning, support environmental learning and learning for sustainable development during the science lessons. Play is important in integrated learning and gives opportunity to understand others’ perspectives, Theory of mind. The results indicate an integrated learning process by the pupils, implying in what way they express human impact on nature.

Research focusing on students’ argumentation in socioscientific issues (SSI) shows that students tend to base their arguments on values rather than knowledge. This study explores Swedish upper secondary chemistry students’ written argumentation. The data consists of student texts written at the end of an intervention designed to develop skills related to high quality argumentation. The results show that after being taught about argumentation and the context of SSI, students mainly base their arguments on content knowledge. Value justifications are present in students’ texts, but constitute a smaller proportion. Beside content knowledge- and value justifications, we found a third category – “reasoning” – in which students draw conclusions, or make predictions of future events, to support or refute a claim. The justifications in the argumentative texts include a breadth of subject areas in which chemistry knowledge plays an important role. This study suggests that content knowledge constitutes an important part in student argumentation.

This article presents a new joint Nordic study module consisting of a theoretical framework, the kindergarten teacher students’ case study and a reflection talk, in natural science for the kinder-garten teacher education. The module is developed through an interdisciplinary collaboration in the Nordplus network: Learning of science concepts by kindergarten children: Nordic study module for the kindergarten teacher education (NATGREP), with science and quality in the kindergarten teacher education in focus. The introduction describes the Nordic kindergartens shortly, and concepts as quality and competence are shortly discussed. It is followed by the module’s theoretical framework. Then the study module’s development process is described accompanied by reflections of the student’s case studies in relation to the theoretical framework. At the end, the work with the study module is summarised, and the main conclusion is that the study module contributes positively to the students’ skills development, both in science and quality.