Recent international assessments indicate a decline in Finnish students’ interest and performance in science, emphasising the need for more relevant and motivating science education. Including the nature of science (NOS) into teaching offers an approach to address this issue as NOS instruction has been shown to enhance students’ interest in science, challenge stereotypical images of scientists, and promote a more realistic understanding of scientific practices and processes. This study examines the extent to which NOS is represented in primary school textbooks and workbooks used in environmental studies in Swedish speaking schools in Finland. Through content analysis, we explored three NOS domains: scientific processes and tools, the human aspects of science, and the characteristics and limits of scientific knowledge. The results show that NOS content is unevenly distributed and often presented implicitly, with the domain on characteristics and limits of science being least represented. Given the influential role of textbooks in classroom practice, these findings underscore the need for stronger NOS integration in textbook development and curriculum design in Finland.
Personalet i barnehagen skal ifølge den norske rammeplanen støtte og berike barnas initiativ, undring og nysgjerrighet. Forskning viser at barnehagepersonalet har lite kunnskap og erfaring med hvordan de kan gjøre dette i praksis. Vi har undersøkt hvilken rolle prosjektet «Arctic Frontiers Science for Kids», ledet av et vitensenter, har hatt for samskaping med barnehagen for å støtte barns nysgjerrige utforskning. Datamaterialet består av prosjektdokumenter, feltnotater og intervjuer av personalet i barnehagen som har deltatt i prosjektet. Analysen av intervjuene viser at personalet opplever vitensenterets rolle som ekstern prosessleder og kunnskapsformidler som en viktig støtte og en kilde til bevisstgjøring i barnehagens arbeid med å følge opp barns nysgjerrighet i en travel hverdag. Vitensentrets prosjektledelse har videre bidratt til at personalet opplever at forpliktende deltakelse og samarbeid var nødvendig og at prosjektet bidro til felles inspirasjon og engasjement. I tillegg lærte personalet mye om hvordan utforskende og lek-baserte læreprosesser med utgangspunkt i barnas interesser fungerte i praksis. Vi drøfter muligheter og utfordringer med i å innhente ekstern ekspertise i barnehagen – spesielt med tanke på å drive naturfaglig utforskning på barnas egne premisser. Artikkelen bidrar med empiri og innsikt i hvordan samskapende prosesser for utforskning kan foregå i barnehagen.
Dialogue is considered an important tool for learning. In this study we therefore wanted to investigate how preservice science teachers talked together in a scientific context. We analysed how unsupervised students talked together when they observed different properties of soil. We found that the students talk, despite sometimes including exploratory qualities like explanations, was mostly cumulative. That is, they uncritically built on each other's observations. Furthermore, although only a small proportion of the conversations were characterized as exploratory, we did identify several episodes giving rise to cognitive conflicts where the students failed to seize the opportunity to engage in exploratory talk. This was primarily a result of them not asking each other to explain or justify statements related to their observations. These results highlight the need for explicit scientific dialogue training in teacher education.
This study aims to analyse how Swedish science centres frame learning and interest in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) by using a qualitative research approach based on the theoretical and methodological framework Designs for Learning. Despite ongoing political and educational efforts to strengthen STEM education, challenges remain in fostering engagement among students. Insights from informal education at science centres may contribute to the development of formal STEM education. The data consists of applications for government grants from fifteen science centres covering the years 2014 to 2023. The results show that science centres highlight four main designs to promote interest and learning: Experiences, Emotions, Educational content, and Encounters with individuals. The analysis identifies underlying conditions in how these designs are represented, particularly regarding how the choice of content influences perceptions of what STEM entails.
Forty years ago, the first symposium of what would become NFSUN (Nordic Research Symposium on Science Education) took place. Since then, these triennial symposia have become a vital forum for (mostly) Nordic lecturers and researchers in science education to present and discuss their research. In this paper we have used the abstracts from approximately 1000 contributions to explore possible trends. We used automated searches for a set of science education research terms in our database of NFSUN-abstracts. The results show trends towards shifting focus from science content to didactical themes, movement into qualitative research methods and increasingly diverse methods, and in later years alignment with current international trends, such as inquiry, socio-scientific-issues, environment and sustainability. Our summary of the international situation based on a set of reviews, indicates that Nordic research broadly reflects the international research but also has its own characteristics.
