En viktig målsättning för naturvetenskaplig undervisning är att utveckla förmågan att formulera undersökningsbara frågor. Syftet med den här studien är att undersöka hur undervisning som utformats med hjälp av metoden Question Formulation Technique (QFT) kan stödja utveckling av elevers förmåga att formulera naturvetenskapligt undersökningsbara frågor.  QFT är en modell för att utveckla elevers förmåga att formulera och värdera sina egna frågor i allmänhet. I studien prövas QFT i en svensk skolkontext och inom ramen för naturvetenskaplig undervisning. Studien genomfördes som en interventionsstudie i gymnasieskolan och inom ramen för kursen Gymnasiearbete. I kursen ska eleverna genomföra en egen naturvetenskaplig undersökning. QFT användes för att utforma undervisning som del av introduktionen till kursen. Data består av videoinspelningar av elevsamtal från undervisning som har analyserats utifrån ett pragmatiskt ramverk med organiserande syften och praktisk epistemologisk analys. Resultaten visar vilka närliggande syften som etableras i elevernas samtal om undersökningsbara frågor i undervisningen: (A) att producera så många frågor som möjligt, (B) att bedöma vilka frågor som är mest relevanta, (C) att kategorisera frågor, (D) att hitta och specificera ett undersökningsobjekt och (E) att planera för att genomföra en undersökning. Slutsatsen är att QFT kan fungera som stöd för lärares planering av undervisning om naturvetenskapligt undersökningsbara frågor under förutsättning att läraren aktivt stödjer eleverna i att uppmärksamma centrala kvaliteter avseende undersökningsbarhet och genom att binda samman närliggande syften med det övergripande syftet. 

This article provides a conceptual discussion of 'ownership' in various forms of participatory research. The discussion is grounded in our experiences from three research projects in science education. We seek to understand how and why ownership may be distributed between teachers and researchers at different stages in the research process. Looking at our projects in retrospect, we see that ownership was differently distributed at the initial stages. Then ownership distribution followed a similar pathway, as teachers gained ownership of implementation, whereas researchers reclaimed ownership of analyzing and disseminating the work. Our discussion departs from the idea that ownership relates to both 'risks' and 'benefits' as well as to both 'rights' and 'obligations'. Thereby, we can make visible some of the circumstances that steer ownership towards the teachers or researchers. For example, we highlight that ownership distribution may be influenced by guidelines for research ethics and inequalities in terms of administrative support structures available to researchers and teachers. Based on our discussion, we suggest a number of questions to initiate and support a continuous dialogue between teachers and researchers who plan to engage in participatory research.

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.

This dissertation is about science education as an education for citizenship with a particular focus on the potential of inviting students to participate in critical examination of public issues in the media. Through digital media, a vast amount of health-related information is readily available to the public. People who turn to the Internet in search of health information of any kind, will come across a vast array of voices, information and contradictory claims. The rationale of this dissertation is the recognised challenges for citizens to stay critical when public issues that relate to health and nutrition are examined on the Internet. The aim of this dissertation is to contribute to expanding and nuancing the understanding of students’ critical examination of public issues in science education by drawing on a capabilities approach. Philosopher Martha Nussbaum’s version of the capabilities approach and notion of ‘world citizenship’ is situated in science education and used for analysing students’ participation in critical examination of public issues relating to health. In addition, sociocultural perspectives are drawn upon to conceptualise learning. The dissertation builds on two different research projects, both conducted as design-based research collaborations with upper secondary school science teachers and their students. The data are comprised of audio and video recordings of student group discussions as they search for and critically examine health-related information on the Internet, and video recordings and field notes from the teachers’ whole-class introductions to the activities. Data have been analysed using qualitative content analysis, also drawing on the work of Nussbaum. The findings in this dissertation are presented in four papers. Paper I reports how the introduction of an evaluation tool afforded and constrained students’ critical examination of health issues on the Internet, and how this process can be fruitfully analysed by taking a capabilities approach. The findings show how use of the evaluation tool caused students to privilege scientific information, leaving lived experiences of health issues and students’ own purposes of the information-searching unexamined. Paper II focuses students’ critical examination of controversial and emerging science reported in news media. The findings illuminate how students’ encounters with a controversial nutrition study on the Internet triggered epistemological work — the examination of scientific knowledge as embedded in social, cultural and historical practices. Paper III focuses students’ critical examination of a science-laden public issue concerning milk consumption. The findings show how the students examine their own and societal moral underpinnings of consuming milk, and how the production and consumption of milk affect people's lives and the places we live. In these conversations on milk, the students also imagine different sustainable futures. Paper IV proposes a heuristic for ethical reflection on participatory science education research, highlighting reflective questions in relation to the dimensions of ontology, epistemology and methodology. It is intended to extend standard ethical reflection in education research by taking hierarchies, roles, values, risks, objectives and accountability into account. Overall, the results reported in this dissertation emphasise that students’ critical examination of public issues in the media cannot be limited to source critique that aims to sift out ‘facts’ and uncontested science. This dissertation illuminates the potentiality of science education for citizenship in providing students with opportunities to participate in critical examination of themselves and society in encounters with issues of public concern.

The advancement of participatory methodologies and educational action research has raised challenges of research ethics that concern the relations between different actors. Different forms of participatory research rest on cooperation between teachers, researchers, and students in different forms of relations. The ways in which these relations are enacted are often related to research objectives, epistemology, the people involved in the study, and the context in which the study is carried out. In this chapter we seek to disentangle some ethical challenges emerging from three different teacher-researcher collaborations in science education research. What values are at stake and what are the potential tensions in attempting to secure different values? This includes the ethical implications of requiring shared responsibility between teachers and researchers in development of educational practices and knowledge generation. We discuss how different forms of teacher-researcher collaboration transform ethics and epistemology and how the ethics and epistemology become intertwined. In addition to standard ethical reflection, an ethics of participatory research in science education has to include considerations of the ontological, epistemological, and methodological values at stake.

This study focuses the emerging need for young people to critically respond to alarming messages in contemporary media highlighting the potential benefits or harms of certain foods. Besides being technical, advancements in the field of nutrition reported in media are often of tentative and speculative character, primarily selected and constructed on the basis of their news value rather than as representing established knowledge. The study aims to study students' capabilities to navigate and critically respond to controversial media messages about health and nutrition in the context of science education. Our theoretical point of departure is in the concept an examined life in the critical reflection tradition of Socrates and the Stoics. We analyze how groups of upper secondary science class students engage in critical examination of a controversial message about cow's milk encountered through Swedish public service news media on the Internet. The results illuminate that even when controversial findings are produced by a reputed university and communicated through independent media, students are capable of discerning the need to scrutinize such findings and are capable of performing such critical examination drawing on experiences of scientific investigations. Students' openness to question authoritative voices in society and to illuminate the new findings on milk from multiple perspectives reflects how an examined life may be enacted in the context of science education. Inviting students to participate in related activities shows promise for enabling a critical examination of themselves and others in ways deemed important for democratic citizenship.

Denna studie fokuserar på innebörder av att kunna formulera undersökningsbara frågor i naturvetenskap. Studien tar utgångspunkt i naturvetenskapligt undersökande som epistemiskt arbete. Den forskningsfråga som undersöks är: Vilka kvalitativa aspekter av kunnande kommer till uttryck i gymnasieelevers arbete med att formulera naturvetenskapligt undersökningsbara frågor? Studien har genomförts som en designbaserad studie med sex interventioner på gymnasiet där eleverna i den genomförda undervisningen har fått i uppgift att, i olika sammanhang, formulera undersökningsbara frågor. Data innefattar film- och ljudinspelningar och har analyserats med hjälp av kvalitativ innehållsanalys. Resultaten synliggör tre kvalitativa aspekter av att formulera undersökningsbara frågor: Precisering av det epistemiska objektet, Operationalisering av det epistemiska objektet samt Värdering av frågeställningen i relation till det epistemiska objektet.

The development of students' capabilities to engage in scientific inquiry is part of the science curricula across the educational system. The purpose of this study is to explo- re the capability to formulate questions for scientific inquiry. The research question is: Which qualitative aspects of knowing are enacted in upper-secondary school students' work with formulating questions for scientific inquiry? The study was conducted as a design-based research study with six interventions in upper-secondary school science education. Data include video and audio recordings. The analysis was conducted as a qualitative content analysis. The results show three qualitative as- pects of knowing how to formulate research questions: Discerning and nuancing the epistemic object, Operationalizing the epistemic object and Evaluating a question for scientific inquiry in relation to the epistemic object.

The internet has become a main source for health-related information retrieval. In addition to information published by medical experts, individuals share their personal experiences and narratives on blogs and social media platforms. Our increasing need to confront and make meaning of various sources and conflicting health information has challenged the way critical reasoning has become relevant in science education. This study addresses how the opportunities for students to develop and practice their capabilities to critically approach online health information can be created in science education. Together with two upper secondary biology teachers, we carried out a design-based study. The participating students were given an online retrieval task that included a search and evaluation of health-related online sources. After a few lessons, the students were introduced to an evaluation tool designed to support critical evaluation of health information online. Using qualitative content analysis, four themes could be discerned in the audio and video recordings of student interactions when engaging with the task. Each theme illustrates the different ways in which critical reasoning became practiced in the student groups. Without using the evaluation tool, the students struggled to overview the vast amount of information and negotiate trustworthiness. Guided by the evaluation tool, critical reasoning was practiced to handle source subjectivity and to sift out scientific information only. Rather than a generic skill and transferable across contexts, students’ critical reasoning became conditioned by the multi-dimensional nature of health issues, the blend of various contexts and the shift of purpose constituted by the students.

The development of students' capability to engage in scientific inquiry is part of the science curricula across the educational system. However, previous research shows that laboratory and practical work in science education do not necessarily develop the capability to engage in scientific inquiry or contribute to developing an understanding of the nature of inquiry. The purpose of this study is to explore how teaching activities can be designed with a specific focus to develop students' capability to formulate questions for scientific inquiry. 

Some science education research points to that in order for students to develop an understanding of the nature of science inquiry, teaching has to include activities explicitly focusing aspects of inquiry such as asking questions, observing and making inferences. In this study we draw on the theoretical framework of epistemic practices to analyse and design teaching with the purpose of developing students' capabilities to formulate questions for scientific inquiry. Epistemic practices refer to the ways people in a specific community propose, justify, evaluate and legitimize knowledge claims within a disciplinary framework. From this perspective, formulating scientifically researchable questions makes sense only as part of epistemic practice in relation to a motive of knowledge production. The research question is: How can epistemic practices be established in upper-secondary school science where students are invited to participate in activities of formulating researchable questions?

The study was carried out as a design-based research collaboration with a research team consisting of nine science teachers and four science education researchers. Data was collected in three cycles of design, intervention and analysis of research lessons with six classes in three different upper-secondary schools. The data consists of video-recordings of student interaction while engaging in tasks of formulating researchable scientific questions. The data is analysed using the didactical model of organizing purposes; distinguishing between overarching purposes and the student-orientated purposes emerging in interaction. The results indicate that the development of students’ capabilities to formulate researchable questions is situated in the processes of interaction with peers, and the conditions for situating the formulation of questions in a practice characterised by closeness to an epistemic object and gathering of observational data. Based on the results, we argue for a shift in science education from focusing students’ views of a generic nature of science or nature of science inquiry to focussing student participation in epistemic practices of various kinds.  

A goal for science education is to develop student capabilities to participate in scientific inquiry. This includes various aspects of inquiry; formulating scientifically researchable questions as well as planning, performing, analyzing and presenting science investigations. In science education practices, there is a tradition of using practical or laboratory work to illustrate science concepts; focussing correct answers and reproduction of ready-made scientific knowledge, rather than engaging students in inquiry. Previous research shows that inquiry teaching predominantly engage students in investigating science questions as formulated beforehand by the teacher or a textbook. Little attention has been paid to what might characterize the capability of formulating scientifically researchable questions in school. In this study we draw on a theoretical framework of epistemic practices. Epistemic practices refer to the ways people in a specific community propose, justify, evaluate and legitimize knowledge claims within a disciplinary framework. From this perspective, formulating and developing scientifically researchable questions makes sense only in relation to a motive of knowledge production. The aim of this study is to explore what might characterize students’ capabilities to formulate and develop scientifically researchable questions in upper secondary science education.

The collected data consists of video-recordings of student interaction in group-work focussing formulating and developing scientifically researchable questions. Data was collected as part of a design-based study with six classes in three different schools. The video-recordings were transcribed in verbatim and analysed by the means of qualitative content analysis. The preliminary results suggest three themes: Formulation of scientifically researchable questions as:

1) Working with the specification of the epistemic object. The theme illustrates how the students elaborated on the meaning of related scientific concepts and discussed cause and effect. 

2) Specifying researchability by focussing on how to operationalize the epistemic object. The theme illustrates how the students reformulate their questions as part of a process of discussing e.g. measurability and variables.

3) Making value-judgements of epistemic objects. The theme illustrates how the students distinguish between scientific and non-scientific questions and make value-judgements about relevance. 

The results contribute to an understanding of what the capability to engage in scientific inquiry as participation in collective epistemic work in an upper-secondary school science classroom might entail. The themes are related to the establishing of a specific scientific epistemic object. The results are discussed in relation to previous research in science education and the development of resources for teaching inquiry framing capabilities of inquiry as generic.