The purpose of this article is to introduce a methodology for analyzing the complex configurations emerging in students' speech and drawing activities, having consequences for how and what students learn and make meaning of in science. Accordingly, we launch a methodology to unfold the multidimensional communication as to deepen the analysis of the science epistemic discourse. We present an empirical account of students' explorations through different signs to demonstrate the construction of the methodology step-by-step. This methodology, a “seven-concept-assemblage,” is rooted in Dewey's pragmatism and Deleuze's experimentalism broadening teachers' and researchers' possibility to target students' science explorations and meaning-making crosscutting different domains. The methodology diminishes the risk of interpretation when grasping unspoken messages and meanings. Empirical data were collected in an elementary school exemplifying the methodology and consist of audio recordings, photographs, fieldnotes, and students' drawings. The result reveals that the methodology in use exposed what and how students explored and learned cognitively and aesthetically. Imagination fertilized the process throughout. Learning then is suggested as a transductive meaning-making process shaped through oral and pictorial relations—always from a purpose.

The purpose of this study was to explore Swedish natural science sexuality education as a material-discursive practice. More specifically, we sought to investigate ways in which the phenomenon of oskuld, which in Swedish means sexual innocence or to be without guilt, comes into being among 17–18-year-old students. The study, conducted in two upper secondary school classes for eight and six weeks respectively, involved in total 53 participating students. Field notes and audio-recordings were used in data construction. With a grounding in Baradian theory we explore how space, time and matter – spacetimematter – intra-actively enact notions of virginity within students’ conversations. Findings show that a physiological knowledge base as well as the opportunity for students to encounter their own notions are crucial in overcoming the reproduction of norms related to the phenomenon of virginity.

The purpose is to contribute knowledge to the field regarding the role of aesthetic experience when young students participate in intertwined science–art activities in science class. More precisely, we scrutinise how science suggestions are shaped in students’ processes of imagination when exploring animal’s ecology. Data corpus comprises audio recordings, photographs, drawings and field notes. The school is located in Sweden and the participating students were between 6 and 7 years old (Swedish grade 1). Seven students and their teacher participated in the study. The dialogues were analysed by means of a practical epistemology analysis (PEA), based on Dewey and the later Wittgenstein. In addition, the analytical term pictorial relation is launched to analyse the visual language exposed in students’ drawings. The results reveal that throughout the process, the young students in transaction with the contextual features, imagined suggestions and solutions to science-related issues. Facts and fiction, sense and nonsense blended when new solutions of pleasurable hiding-places for prey were aesthetically and imaginatively explored and designed. In addition, the students owned the problem throughout and developed agency, which resulted in novel science–art outcomes and the students’ communicative repertoire was extended when involved in intertwined dialogues and art activities. 

In this study we examine upper secondary students’ notions of contraceptive methods, as human reproduction and contraception are common content in sexuality education in Sweden and worldwide. Our data were constructed during an extensive educational sequence in natural science sexuality education and include audio recordings of 17–18-year-old students’ stories. Since the main body of the stories was about hormonal and digital contraception and contraceptive responsibility, these stories are the focal point of our analysis. Our study further aims to problematize, challenge, and develop education on contraceptive methods, and Donna Haraway’s theoretical perspectives have been particularly useful. We have in the analytical process linked Haraway’s cyborg image with her later work on tentacular thinking. Our result shows that scientific facts about human reproduction are important for the students’ ability to navigate between the advantages and disadvantages of various contraceptive methods. However, sexuality education turns out to not only be a matter of scientific facts. This study accentuates how natural science, historical, political, cultural, and market-oriented intertwinings affect students’ notions of contraception—and thereby also the construction of natural science sexuality education. 

I denna studie undersöks tvåspråkiga elevers meningsskapande i naturvetenskap. En återkommande slutsats från tidigare studier är att tvåspråkiga elevers modersmål bör inkluderas i naturvetenskapsundervisningen. De flesta av dessa är dock från länder där lärare och elever talar samma modersmål. I Sverige är klasserna istället ofta mångspråkiga med flera olika modersmål i en och samma klass. Det är därför relevant att studera hur elevers modersmål kan inkluderas i naturvetenskapsundervisningen i en mångspråkig kontext. Data samlades in genom klassrumsobservationer i en årskurs 3 där eleverna arbetade med elektricitet. Två olika förändringar genomfördes i undervisningen: a) eleverna tilläts prata sina modersmål under lektioner i naturvetenskap och b) elever med samma modersmål fick arbeta tillsammans vid gruppaktiviteter. Data analyserades utifrån ett pragmatiskt perspektiv på meningsskapande och teorin om transpråkande. Resultatet visar dels att när eleverna fick möjligheten använde de alltid båda sina språk för att skapa mening i naturvetenskap, och dels en markant minskning av språkliga begräsningar vid gruppaktiviteterna. Under helklassundervisningen på svenska kunde eleverna delta i kortare meningsutbyten, men hade svårare att delta i mer avancerade samtal såsom diskussioner och generaliseringar jämför med när de hade möjlighet att använda hela sin språkliga repertoar. Detta är problematiskt eftersom dessa typer av samtal är nödvändiga för att elever ska utveckla en djupare förståelse av naturvetenskap. Studien visar således på möjliga sätt att öka elever lärande i naturvetenskap i en mångspråkig kontext genom strategier för att inkludera elevers modersmål i undervisningen.

The school responsibility for teaching pornography has been discussed in the Swedish media and various political and non-political contexts. The debate has resulted in changes in the curricula. What teaching about pornogrpahy can include and how it can be expressed is a question requiring further exploration. This study concerns a group of high school teachers' discussions about how to address pornography, from a subject-specific and an interdisciplinary perspective. With a posthumanist starting point, we see how the school's teaching of pornography is intertwined with the prevailing societal debate about (in)equlity, normalization and consumption - affecting how teaching is implemented. The preliminary results also show subject didactic dilemmas and challenges resulting in the teaching being carried out within the mentoring assignment instead if being linked to one or more specific school subjects.

This article concerns how teachers can use physical artefacts as mediating means to support emergent bilingual students’ learning in science class. The data consist of non-participant observations in a Swedish 3^rd grade (9-10 years old) science class. All students were bilingual, but in different minority languages, and the teacher was monolingual in Swedish. The study focused on four students, all of whom had Turkish as their minority language. During the observations, the science content was electricity and the lessons were conducted by using physical artefacts, such as wires, bulbs and batteries. The study takes its stance in the ideas of Dewey and sociocultural approaches, implying that students’ learning is viewed as situational. For the analysis, practical epistemology analysis (PEA) was used. The teacher used physical artefacts in two different ways. First, the physical artefacts implied that the students experienced the science content by actually seeing it. The students talked about their observations in everyday language, which the teacher then drew on to introduce how the phenomena or process in question could be expressed in scientific language. Second, when students’ proficiency in the language of instruction limited their possibilities to make meaning, using physical artefacts enabled them to experience unfamiliar words being related to the science content and thus learn their meaning. The study findings contribute to knowledge concerning how teachers can create learning contexts where physical artefacts are used to mediate scientific meaning. 

In this article we examine a teacher's and multilingual students' use of multiple resources and their potential for students' meaning-making of sound and sound transmission. Students were 14-15 years old, Swedish grade 8, speaking Swedish as a second language. We examine how different strategies and multiple resources interact in creating thematic patterns in a multilingual science classroom. Data comprise 64 hours of video- and audio recordings, digital photos, field-notes, textbooks, worksheets and student notebooks. As analytical tools we use thematic development strategies, control and social interaction strategies as well as strategies of bridging multiple resources. In co-constructing the content using various resources, thematic patterns were developed through a continuous shift between everyday and scientific language due to the teacher's awareness of the unit's abstract and technical content. Findings also reveal that a strategy of control performed by the teacher marked the importance of using 'physics words'. Strategies of social interaction accentuated by earlier experiences as well as personal and humorous connotations expressed in everyday language supported meaning-making. In addition, a number of multiple resources, such as models, gestures, bodily action, drawings, reading and writing were used.

Sex- och samlevnadsundervisningen ingår sedan läroplansreformen 2011 i flertalet ämnes- och kursplaner. Kunskapsområdet som av tradition varit no- och biologilärarnas ansvar har dock fortfarande ofta en anatomisk och reproduktiv ansats (Bredström et al., 2018). Studien syftar därför till att utforska gymnasieelevers syn på olika preventiva metoder. Studien, som genomfördes inom ramen för gymnasieskolans naturkunskapsämne, utforskar elevsamtal om traditionella och hormonella preventivmedel i relation till det digitala preventivmedlet Natural Cycles. Elevernas samtal innefattar även frågan om ansvar gällande preventiva metoder. Studien som genomfördes med hjälp av fältanteckningar och ljudinspelningar omfattar både elevsamtal och lektionsgenomgångar från sammanlagt tolv lektioner i en och samma gymnasieklass. Med en teoretisk utgångspunkt i Haraways (1991) cyborgteori och Foucaults (1980) biopolitik analyseras de mänskliga och icke-mänskliga relationer och spänningar som uppstår i elevernas samtal sinsemellan och i elevernas mötet med preventiva metoder på sociala medier. De preliminära resultaten visar att naturvetenskapliga fakta om mänsklig reproduktionen är viktig för elevens förmåga att navigera mellan fördelar och nackdelar hos de olika preventiva metoderna. Elevernas samtal överskrider dock en traditionell och heteronormativ ingång i sex- och samlevnadsundervisningen, där skydd från oönskad graviditet och sexuellt överförda sjukdomar, såväl historiskt som idag är en central del av den svenska och internationella sexualundervisningen (Bredström et al., 2018; Ringrose et al., 2019). Studien visar vidare att lärarens normkritiska ansats och sexualhistoriska tillbakablick tillhandahåller eleverna  med möjligheten att diskutera såväl ansvarsfrågor som heteronormativa antaganden relaterade till preventivmedel. Studien visar också på ett ifrågasättande av användningen av hormonella preventivmedel (till fördel för digitala preventivmedel), som ofta är kopplade till olika biverkningar hos användaren. Foucaults (1980) biopolitiska begrepp ger vidare en möjlighet att lyfta blicken från elevernas klassrumssamtal och analysera den svenska sex- och samlevnadsundervisningens fostransuppdrag ur ett mer övergripande perspektiv och som en tradition med rötter i 1700-talet.