Getting students to understand the particulate nature of matter is a major challenge for chemistry education. In upper secondary school students commonly struggle to distinguish between intra- and intermolecular bonding and analyse chemical bonding in terms of electronegativity. In this study, we explore how creative drama may be used in chemistry education to facilitate students’ explorations of electronegativity and chemical bonding in Swedish upper secondary chemistry education. The study was conducted as a design-based intervention in three cycles in two schools. The interventions (which lasted for 30–60 minutes) were single-lesson-interventions consisting of drama activities and discussions in whole-class and student groups. A qualitative content analysis produced themes that captured the ways in which the students explored electronegativity and chemical bonding and how creative drama enabled collective student agency. The findings indicate that creative drama enabled the students to link the electronegativity and polarity of molecules to formations of molecular grid structures using their own bodies to represent how molecules were organised in different states of matter. The results also indicate that creative drama in chemistry education may enhance student agency in their explorations of electronegativity and the linking of electronegativity to intramolecular and intermolecular bonding.

The levels of stochastic health effects following exposure to low doses of ionising radiation are not well known. A consequence of the uncertainty is that any radiation exposure is met with deep concernboth by the public and by scientists who disagree about how the partly conflicting results from low-dose studies should be interpreted. The concern is not limited to ionising radiation but is inherent to other areas of modern technologies such as biotechnology or electromagnetic fields. The everyday presence of advanced technologies confronts people with the necessity to take decisions and there is an ongoing debate regarding both the nature and magnitude of potential risks and how education efforts may empower peoples ' decision-making. In the field of radiation research there are different opinions regarding the optimal education methods, spanning from the idea that peoples' fears will be eliminated by introducing dose thresholds below which the risk is assumed to be zero, to suggestions of concentrating research efforts in an attempt to eliminate all uncertainties regarding the effects of low doses. The aim of this paper was to present our approach which is based on developing an education program at the secondary school level where students learn to understand the role of science in society. Teaching about radiation risk as a socio-scientific issue is not based on presenting facts but on showing risks in a broader perspective aiming at developing students' competency in making decisions based on informed assessment. We hope to stimulate and encourage other researchers to pursue similar approaches.

The present paper takes its point of departure in risk being a relevant content for science education, and that there are many different approaches to how to incorporate it. By reviewing the academic literature on the use and definitions of risk from fields such as engineering, linguistics and philosophy, we identified key elements of the risk concept relevant for science education. Risk is a phenomenon of the future that may be conveyed by our activity, it is something that may or may not take place. Hence, at the core of risk we find uncertainty and consequence. Furthermore, the elements of probability and severity are relevant modifiers of the consequence, as well as both subject to uncertainty. Additionally, in framing, understanding and decision-making on risk, as individuals or society, we need to acknowledge that risk has both objective and subjective components, lying in the interface between knowledge and values. In this paper, we describe how these key elements were derived from the literature and derive a schematic model of the risk concept for the purpose of science education. We further discuss how this model may assist in planning, execution and evaluation of teaching activities explicitly or implicitly involving risk issues.

Drama is a way of teaching that has been suggested to support learning, but studies in science education are limited and the potential of using drama needs further scrutiny and design development. In this study, from an upper secondary school in Sweden, we investigate how creative drama may afford students’ meaning-making of abstract non-spontaneous chemical concepts, by exploring what kind of semiotic work students are engaged in when given the opportunity to use their own bodies as semiotic resources. We combine sociocultural theory of learning with multimodal social semiotic analysis. In our analysis, we found different types of transductions and transformations that had consequences for students' meaning-making. A conclusion is that when creative drama activities open up for students to use bodily mode in combination with a variety of other semiotic resources, the students are afforded to explore intermolecular forces in new ways.

More knowledge of how the actual design of the laboratory work influence students' communication, is needed to design and implement physics laboratory work lessons. The aim with this quantitative research, conducted at a Swedish upper secondary school, was to explore how the design of the laboratory work affects students' communication. Twenty students divided into five groups participated in this natural case study and were video recorded while performing four practical tasks with the theme uniformly accelerated motion, designed by their teacher. The four workstations were categorised based on three predefined descriptors: outcome, approach and procedure. Students' work at each workstation was coded according to five defined activities: planning, preparing equipment, collecting data, processing data and analysis of results. The activities were thereafter divided into shorter episodes that were coded for three different types of communication: disputational talk, cumulative talk and exploratory talk. The result shows that the amount of exploratory talk students engaged in are influenced by the style of the laboratory work and the character of the activity. Based on these research results, teachers can better accustom the laboratory work to facilitate fruitful physics discussions which endorse students' learning.

In this case study, we explore students' communication during practical work in physics at an upper secondary school in Sweden from a sociocultural perspective. We investigate the relation between the interaction and content of students' communication and outcomes of their actions, with the purpose of finding new knowledge for informing teachers in their choice of instruction. We make discourse analysis of how students interact but also of what students are discussing in terms of underlying content at a linguistic and cognitive level. Twenty students divided into five groups were video recorded while performing four practical tasks at different stations during laboratory work about motion. An analytical framework was developed and applied for one group to three parts of the transcripts in which three different talk-types occurred. Discursive, content, action and purposive moves in the process were identified for each talk-type at both linguistic and cognitive levels. These moves represent information concerning what the teacher actually assigns students to do, and how students make meaning of the activities. Through these different communicative moves, students experience how laboratory work can enhance their competence to collaborate in a scientific environment with complex practical and theoretical questions to solve quickly. Implications of the findings are discussed.

We report from the first iteration of a teaching sequence on nanoscience and nanotechnology (NST) in a Swedish secondary school science classroom. Twelve students, age 18, had seven lessons based on design principles of student ownership and talk space in the learning process. The study covers three areas: 1) the students’ learning of basic knowledge of NST, 2) their risk understanding of NST and 3) their ability to discuss NST as a socioscientific issue during a debate. The present paper focusses on a video recorded and transcribed final debate. In this debate students discussed NST as a socioscientific issue, identified risks and benefits in six different NST areas. These areas were selected from an online outreach activity and studied in groups of two. The debate showed that it is possible with only small resources and few lessons to introduce a discussion promoting climate in the classroom and that students can engage in qualified argumentation on NST. To further develop these aspects, we will add a lesson before the debate providing the students with tools for risk assessment and argumentation in coming iterations of this teaching sequence. Our analysis categorized the students into four groups by argument and decisive values indicating different degrees of risk averseness. These four groups share similarities with the argument–decisions found in earlier science education research. We conclude that students’ judgementof risks and benefits are based on knowledge from the studied course material, but that the decision made also includes personal values. In our continued research with this NST teaching sequence, we hope to find out if all these four groups could be found within each NST area which would indicate that these are general attitudes towards NST risks.

The problem-solving process is investigated for five groups of students when solving context-rich problems in an introductory physics course included in an engineering programme. Through transcripts of their conversation, the paths in the problem-solving process have been traced and related to a general problem-solving model. All groups exhibit backward moves to earlier stages in the problem-solving process. These earlier stages are revisited by the groups for identifying sub-problems, setting parameter values or even restating the goal. We interpret this action as coming from the fact that the students have not yet developed a knowledge base and a problem-solving scheme. Connected to the backward moves in the process are opportunities for the group members to build such a knowledge base from contributions and experiences from all group members. Problem contents that induce such moves are identified and can thus be considered by science teachers when constructing problems for group work.

Studies have shown that students’ awareness of the goals and purposes of the laboratory activityis important for their possibility to participate in and learn from the activity. While practical activitiesoften have been considered to be a central part of science education, relatively few studies haveexamined laboratory work in situ. In this paper we addressed these issues by examining (a) whatpurposes are distinguished when students’ work with a laboratory assignment and (b) how thesepurposes are made continuous with the teacher’s aim with the assignment. The data was based onclassroom observations from two ordinary laboratory settings, one from a chemistry class in lowersecondary school and one from a physics class in the natural science programme in upper secondaryschool. Although both student groups acknowledged their teacher’s intentions with the practical andcould act towards the more student centered purposes of the activity, e.g. describe what happens withthe copper and measure the speed of a small vessel respectively, there were differences regarding thepossibilities the students had to act toward the activity’s final aim. The results showed that these factorscan be referred to the amount of purposes introduced by the teacher as well as those that arosebecause of contingences, and the connection of these purposes to students’ prior experiences.

In the present paper we combine two analytical frameworks in order to extend our understanding of how students reason about a socio-scientific issue, namely, nanomaterials in consumer products. Using the results from two focus group discussions including seven students each, we first thematically explored undergraduate engineering students' risk perception. Two main themes were found in this analysis: "Exploring the concept of nanotechnology" and "Handling risks with nanotechnology." Second, we analyzed the nature of students' arguments using the SEE-SEP model, which is a coding scheme based on the subject areas Sociology/Culture, Environment, Economy, Science, Ethics/Morality, and Policy, intertwining the three aspects Knowledge, Values, and Personal experience. According to this analysis, 55% of the participants' arguments were based on values, 25% on knowledge, and 20% on personal experiences. Despite the absence of specific knowledge, however, the students could conduct a complex argumentation about nanomaterials and actively examined the paradox of new opportunities but unresolved risks. The students' reasoning reveals that arguments in favor and arguments against the use of nanomaterials in different products do not cross each other out, but co-exist. The results indicate that the risk perception was influenced to some degree by the area of use, such as skin care products or car treatment. It was also found that when lacking specific knowledge, our participants turned to analogies to other technology developments. Implications for education on nanotechnology are discussed.