This article presents an in-depth analysis of the Swedish data from the international VASI-E (Views about Scientific Inquiry – Elementary) study. The purpose is to contribute to further knowledge on what younger students know about scientific inquiry (SI). Data were collected by using the VASI-E instrument and were administered to 110 students in the 3rd grade. Furthermore, 24 students were interviewed in order to obtain a deepened qualitative understanding of the students’ views about SI. As already shown in the international VASI-E study, the majority of the students did not have an adequate understanding of SI. Many students seem to embrace a view of SI as following a unique ‘scientific method’, sometimes described as ‘doing experiments’, often in combination with the posing of hypotheses. Furthermore, several students seemed to be unaware of the central role of posing questions as the first step of conducting SI. According to several students, a scientist is a person who should know answers rather than pose questions. A possible reason for this obscured view of SI is the focus on conducting scientific investigations rather than on understanding the different aspects of SI in their teaching. Methodological aspects of the VASI-E instrument are also discussed.

Previous research suggests that the use of metaphors in science education have both possibilities and challenges. In this study, we analyse the role of metaphors in meaning-making in the upper primary science classroom. We investigate the potential of metaphors about nutrient uptake occurring in classrooms in which an animation was used. To identify metaphors in the classroom interaction, we have applied an analysis according to systemicfunctional grammar (SFG), rooted in social semiotic theory. The present study indicates that the use of metaphors can play an important role in scientific meaning-making, since, in that way, students and teachers can make meaning about scientific processes and functions before having access to the scientific terminology. However, if metaphors are to be functional tools for meaning-making in science education, the teacher has an important role to play in, among other things, explicitly connecting the metaphors and everyday language to scientific concepts. We argue that metaphors based on functional similarity have a high affordance for making meaning about complex processes, such as nutrient uptake.

The understanding of sustainability issues and preparedness to take action towards a sustainable future involves abilities to navigate between past, present, and future. This paper explores how the use of imaginary transitions in time – in the form of historying, and futuring in process drama – may afford student understanding of the wicked problem of plastics. The study draws on a design-based research study on process drama in upper-secondary school chemistry teaching which was conducted in collaboration with two teachers. During the process drama, the students and teachers travel in time to explore the uses of plastic; the motives and needs for using plastic as well as the consequences of plastic use in the form of plastic pollution today and in the future. The collected data consist of video- and audio recordings, which were analysed through qualitative content analysis that discerned how the students connected the temporalities, and which dimensions of the plastic problem were made visible in the temporal movements in the process drama. Our findings indicate that the temporal transitions made visible several dimensions of the plastic issue, and contributed to adding layers of complexity to the issue of plastics.

Knowledge of scientific inquiry (SI) is considered essential to the development of an individual's Scientific Literacy (SL) and therefore, SI is included in many international science education reform documents. Two previous large scale international studies assessed the SI understandings of students entering middle school and secondary students at the end of their formal K-12 science education. The purpose of this international project was to use the VASI-E to collect data on what primary level students have learned about SI in their first few years of school. This study adds to previous research to bridge the landscape of SI understandings now with representation from primary, middle and high school samples. A total of 4,238 students from 35 countries/regions spanning six continents participated in the study. The results show that globally, primary students are not adequately informed about SI for their age group. However, when compared with the students in the previous international studies (grades seven and 12), the primary students' understandings were surprisingly closer to the levels of understanding of SI of the secondary school students than those in the seventh grade study.

This study targets a special form of educational drama called process drama, as a potential means for enabling student engagement with wicked problems. The overarching aim is to explore how process drama may afford student agency in dealing with wicked problems in upper secondary chemistry education. It is a design-based study with two cycles of intervention in two schools. A process drama plan was designed to focus on the wicked problem of plastic pollution. The interventions were video- and audiotaped and thereafter transcribed. The data were analysed using a combination of qualitative content analysis and a sociocultural framework of the two dialectics agency|structure and margin|centre. The analysis resulted in three themes regarding how plastic pollution and plastic use was explored in the process drama. The students participated in a constant flow between margin and centre where different spaces for students’ agency was afforded. In brief, our main finding is that process drama enables students and teachers to participate in a variety of ways in the exploration of wicked problems, and talk about plastic pollution and plastic use, while drawing on knowledge and perspectives of science as well as values and societal and social science perspectives and knowledge.

This chapter reflects on the contribution of science education by means of socio scientific issues (SSI) to global citizenship education and education for sustainability from a Swedish research perspective. The relation between what science inquiry and moral inquiry may entail in SSI for educating our future citizens is discussed. We argue that equipping citizens not only with factual knowledge, but also training them to act with moral reflection, has become an even more important goal for education due to the current planetary emergency. Ethics/morality are of special importance for SSI argumentation, but research is still limited concerning how people’s knowledge, value and personal experience are related to ethics/morality in SSI argumentation and how moral inquiry can be further enhanced through education. The chapter is composed of three main parts. First, SSI related research, practices and policy in Sweden are briefly presented. Second, two empirical studies from Sweden are presented as examples to further reveal the complexity of people’s knowledge, value and personal experience in relation to science and moral inquiry. Last, a didactic model for science and moral inquiry via SSI is presented to promote reflective and responsible citizens for sustainability and Bildung globally. In the chapter, science and moral inquiry are seen as intertwined in SSI education, as two entities which presuppose each other like the Yin and Yang in Daoist Chinese philosophy.

Research has shown the importance of dealing with real-life issues and of enabling student encounters with complexity in chemistry education in order to increase student participation. Therefore, this study aims to analyse how complexity evolves in students’ discussions and how this complexity relates to aspects of tentativeness in chemistry. In the study, we analyse how a previously developed didactic model can be refined from the students’ considerations evolving from the present context. The study was conducted as an in situ study in one upper-secondary school. Students’ discussions were recorded on video. The recordings were transcribed and analysed using deliberative educational questions. Two different kinds of considerations emerged in the students’ discussions: factual and exploratory considerations. While factual considerations are an important element of chemistry education, students also need to encounter exploratory considerations. The study proposes a didactic model useful for teachers in didactic analysis and design of activities aiming to support students to unfold complexity through exploratory considerations. One implication is to base activities on real-life issues in order to invite the unpredictability needed for experiencing complexity and the exploratory nature of chemistry. These issues enable students to experience aspects of tentativeness in chemistry and thereby increase their understanding of NOS and chemistry as a knowledge building practice. Furthermore, this might also increase student participation in chemistry education. 

This paper analyses data from the Swedish sample of the international VASI (Views about scientific inquiry) study (Lederman et al. [2019]. An international collaborative investigation of beginning seventh grade students’ understandings of scientific inquiry: Establishing a baseline. Journal of Research in Science Teaching. Published online. https://doi.org/10.1002/tea.21512). Understandings about scientific inquiry involve knowledge about the processes of inquiry, and are not the same as being able to do inquiry although these are related domains. This paper focuses on what students know about scientific inquiry and what impact school science may have on this knowledge. Data were collected using the VASI instrument developed previously and was administered to 126 students at the beginning of year seven and 145 students at the end of year 12 in a cross-sectional design. Results indicate that the majority of students do not have an informed understanding of key aspects of scientific inquiry in either grade. Although students in year 12 are more informed, the average is still less than 50% as measured by the VASI and with a large spread. 

Understandings of the nature of scientific inquiry (NOSI), as opposed to engaging students in inquiry learning experiences, are included in science education reform documents around the world. However, little is known about what students have learned about NOSI during their pre-college school years. The purpose of this large-scale follow-up international project (i.e. 32 countries and regions, spanning six continents and including 3917 students for the high school sample) was to collect data on what exiting high school students have learned about NOSI. Additionally, the study investigated changes in 12th grade students' NOSI understandings compared to seventh grade (i.e. 20 countries and regions) students' understandings from a prior investigation [Lederman et al. (2019). An international collaborative investigation of beginning seventh grade students' understandings of scientific inquiry: Establishing a baseline. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 56(4), 486-515. ]. This study documents and discusses graduating high school students' understandings and compares their understandings to seventh grade students' understandings of the same aspects of scientific inquiry for each country. It is important to note that collecting data from each of the 130+ countries globally was not feasible. Similarly, it was not possible to collect data from every region of each country. A concerted effort was made, however, to provide a relatively representative picture of each country and the world.

The interest of this study is in how science education may contribute to cultivating democratic citizenship in a globalised world. The drive for joint global action and a mutual sense of responsibility for achieving a sustainable future need to be balanced with consideration for inequalities, accountability and differences in agency among people around the world. This raises questions of what citizens need to know, do, and feel to respond to the contemporary and future needs of a broader humanity. We explore how Martha Nussbaum's notion of world citizenship (1997) may be used to expand the understanding of critical examination of socioscientific controversies in science education. We analyse how groups of upper secondary science students engage in a critical examination of dairy and oat milk production and consumption from multiple perspectives. The study exemplifies how the critical examination of science may be recognised not only as source critique, but also as a way to: critically examine norms, traditions and personal habits; recognise oneself as bound to others by mutual concern for human and environmental wellbeing; imagine pathways to a sustainable future; and make moral judgements on a cow's right to life.