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Paper 1 presents a content analysis of five Swedish biology textbooks using feminist, crip (disability), and queer perspectives. The results show that trans persons, homosexuality, bisexuality, and heterosexuality are standard content. Representations of disabilities are sparse, while intersex and asexuality are not included. In paper 2, Swedish whiteness is analysed in the textbooks and in teacher interviews through the lens of critical race theory. The findings reveal that references to legislation, science, progression, ethnicity, tradition, and culture construct Swedish whiteness as a ‘happy’ place ‘here’, in contrast to less happy places elsewhere, far away ‘there’. Paper 3 concerns different tensions that arise during classroom teaching and how teachers balance these situations. Both the anti-oppressive strategies and the teaching methods are analysed with a focus on processes, facts, and relations. The results show that teachers can use tensions in sexuality education to challenge prejudice and heteronormative assumptions. Also, teachers’ inclusion of students’ thoughts and worlds, even around controversial topics, creates recognition, subjectification, and meaning making for the students. Paper 4 explores how teachers handle unexpected situations in sexuality education classrooms. These interruptions are analysed through the theoretical concepts becomings, intensity, and glow. According to the results, when teachers capture unexpected comments, student engagement is aroused, allowing new concepts to enrich the sexuality education content. In sum, this thesis concludes that sexuality education needs to embrace more diverse content. This could be achieved through fluid conceptions of bodies and sexualities, thus facilitating students' recognition and subjectification, especially through the inclusion of nuances of asexuality, alternative family constellations, intersex, and through crip (disability) perspectives. Finally, teachers need to welcome tensions and the unexpected as rich possibilities to capture new sexuality education content and to create student engagement.

Education has responded to global Sustainable Development (SD) goals by drawing on a range of issue-related, context-based, and cross-curricular approaches to teaching SD. This paper aims to examine how teachers describe the content in SD and how they justify this content concerning their teaching practice. The Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) framework, with its reflective tool Content Representation (CoRe), was used in combination with semi-structured interviews to capture 18 Swedish upper-secondary science teachers’ reflections. The results indicate four themes of content that the teachers emphasise: energy and global warming, ecosystem services and biodiversity, presence of harmful substances and materials in nature, and imbalance of natural substances in nature. The teachers justified these content themes in terms of the importance of students’ gaining different perspectives (local, global, ecological, social, and economic), belief in the future, action competence, and general scientific education. The paper contributes to sustainability education research, as it focuses on teaching sustainability in the light of the PCK framework. Also, it can support and inspire teachers when they decide what content to include when teaching SD.

In this paper, we explore the potentials of applying art-based research methods in science education research. Art-based methods are a range of qualitative methods that draw on performative, creative, and visual elements and thus propose innovative ways to produce knowledge in research. The paper is based on a systematic review of the literature on applying art as research methods in science education research. The review shows that only a few studies within science education use art-based methods as a methodological approach. Additionally, the literature identified through a snowball approach was thematically analysed. Four themes were identified: knowledge made available through artefacts, non-verbal language, more balanced power and positions, and time to reflect. The analysis outlines the strengths embedded within applying art-based methods and the potentials that they present to science education research. The implications for research and limitations of art-based methods are discussed.

This study analyses research reports on textbooks in genetics education regarding the fact-value distinction. From the perspective of four possible fact-value-related discourses, I have conducted a content analysis of 19 research reports on genetics in textbooks after 2002 (articles, book chapters, and one paper based on a conference presentation.) The general background for this review is an underlying interest in combining and integrating academic achievements and value(s) education in the context of science education in the field of genetics and human beings, by, at the same time realizing the challenges in practicing the principle of interdisciplinarity. This “interest” has been illustrated both in the science education literature and in general educational theory during the last decades. Our study falls into two parts. First, we conducted a qualitative interpretative content analysis. Second, we used a quantitative approach by counting value-related words. We identified the discourses on a continuum, from single-academic-discipline-oriented discourse (based on the natural sciences) to interdisciplinary value-oriented discourse involving the social sciences and/or the humanities with their related concepts and debates. Based on our study we can recommend future researchers on textbooks to be aware of the discourses we have exemplified and therefore explicitly delimitate their study accordingly. In this context one research field could be to study what textbooks say about how to discuss value questions in the context of science and science education.

Despite international emphasis on the advantage of children’s exploration, there is limited knowledge about how availability of physical materials influence children´s exploratory activities. This paper presents findings from a study that examined the availability and use of materials related to science in 26 Norwegian kindergartens. Data were collected by kindergarten teacher students during their practice in kindergartens. Quantitative data were gathered using checklists, qualitative data by observations of children´s activities involving science related materials. The quantitative and qualitative data were analyzed separately and then together using the three categories of exploratory activities introduced by Neuman: formal activities, informal activities and incidental activities. Our findings surface that most kindergartens had much of the materials listed in the checklist, but much of it was locked up and only a few of the objects, such as vinyl animals and books, were available for children´s informal activities. We also found that formal activities gave stimuli to informal activities, which highlights the importance of including children in collective activities as working with theme or projects over time. Only one of the activities in our data was categorized as incidental. Our findings indicate that benefits of using materials to extend children`s exploration are not taken fully advantage of and should be further discussed and highlighted.

Since 2015, discussions on how to educate the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have been under the scope of the international community, while research in SDG education in particular for early childhood education is still scarce. This paper builds on focus groups discussions with pre-school personel to explore challenges and opportunities with educating and learning the SDGs for children between 1-5 years. The analysis shows that (1) despite the intention of an interdisciplinary teaching, questions about sustainable development and Agenda 2030 tend to be fragmented, 2) preschool teachers perceive the organisational conditions of preschools as beneficial for teaching for sustainable development, and 3) the children's interest is given great importance and is often seen as a prerequisite for the teachers work, but at the same time a dilemma is expressed with losing goals and focus.

Inquiry-based science education is highly emphasized in recent curricula. Our paper aims to find out more about the connections between science teachers' orientation toward the textbook and the enabling of inquiry-based teaching. It will be important to map this connection better in improving how to facilitate inquiry-based education. The textbook has a strong position in the Norwegian school system, and teaching based on the textbook is often seen as oppositional to inquiry-based teaching. On a national level, more research about the use of textbooks and its implications for science teaching is needed. A survey has been conducted among science teachers at 68 lower secondary schools in three (recently merged into two) counties in Norway. The survey data is used to measure the textbook’s importance for science teachers, and the extent to which the textbook contributes to inquiry in science teaching. Results show that the textbook has a central role for science teachers. The textbook is partly perceived as supportive for facilitating inquiry activities, especially for textbook-oriented teachers. At the same time, the study shows that those teachers who frequently facilitate inquiry are not closely tied to the textbook.

Through a series of practice-based narratives, drawn from specific experiences in a higher-education context in Sweden, the affordances of multimodal objects are reflected upon. In this work, multimodal objects are considered as boundary objects that can facilitate learning conversations, both cognitive and affective. Current work in science education research has highlighted the role that boundary-crossings between knowledge and values offer teaching and learning. The author believes such boundary-crossings to be essential in the current context of prolific species extinction, on a planet in which human-made materials now outweigh the living biomass; a planet in which life, death, self and other are ‘braided vulnerabilities’ across a complex socio-biological landscape. Thus, in these iterative, practice-based reflections on specific teaching moments, this paper offers small steps towards reimagining biology didactics in the ‘post-normal’ conditions of the 21st century. In so doing, possibilities for multimodal objects in contemporary biology didactics are reflected upon and suggested.

Denmark has a strong foundation in terms of sustainability, making the country an interesting backdrop for studying how the overarching sustainability agenda has shaped education practice. This study investigated the scope and status of sustainability education targeted at grade 4-6 students in Danish out-ofschool science education institutions, such as natural history museums, science and technology museums, science centres, zoos and aquaria. First, a desktop review took place to map educational programmes with sustainability content. Second, five representative programmes were selected for further study. Thematic analysis of observation field notes and interviews with educators and teachers yielded four themes that collectively defined the sustainability programmes: institution, formal education, content and pedagogy. The final sections of the paper contextualise these themes, and discuss their implications for sustainability education in out-of-school practice. The study concludes by offering reflections on constructive future pathways for sustainability education.

This paper explores the experiences of first-year biotechnology students during the first eight months of their studies. We study what the students expected to be challenging when entering the programme, and what they eventually experienced as challenging as they progressed further into the programme. Building on qualitative data (video-diaries, interviews and open-ended survey responses), we analyse the dimensions of challenges, the congruence and the students’ sense of belonging. We find that students were mainly challenged by the organisational dimension (lack of clarity in goals and course organisation). The social relations to peers were pivotal for the students as learning support when managing the challenges and decoding expectations, but also for keeping up the motivation. We argue that in order to support the students’ sense of belonging and their academic achievements, the study programmes should facilitate the formation of social networks and consider the course organisation and management.

In the teaching of scientific subjects, several semiotic resources such as images, texts, physical models, audio recordings and film have been used for a long time. In recent years, digital learning resources have also been added, such as simulations and virtual and augmented realities. In this paper, an investigation of how pupils understand the science of hearing and the anatomy of the ear with the support of various semiotic resources is performed by a teacher/researcher. How do pupils reflect on their understanding of hearing when they use different semiotic resources in teaching? In this investigation five different semiotic resources are compared. The analysis of questionnaires, interviews and lesson observations shows how the pupils move between the different modalities. The findings indicate that pupils can benefit from using carefully chosen different semiotic resources. It could also matter in which order the semiotic resources are used. The study shows that embodied cognition plays a prominent role, such as touching a physical model of an ear. Furthermore, understanding the anatomy of the ear is described as better using a physical model, while understanding the process of hearing is described as better using a simulation. These findings can be useful for teachers, student teachers, teacher educators and teaching aid developers.

This paper describes how a school-industry partnership can define and frame problem-based science teaching developed for lower secondary school. Among the identified positive outcomes was that students engaged in working with the authentic problems. Further, the student’s possibilities for building relations with the employees during the course was of central importance e.g. when they received feedback. Challenges reflected that the teachers and students were uncomfortable with the innovative problem-based teaching method and had a curricular-dominated view on science education. This was expressed in their concerns about what they see as indistinct connections between work phases and a lack of scientific content. It is proposed to use pedagogical link-making as a tool to create spatiotemporal coherence for the students and make connection between scientific concepts based on examples from the study. Link-making may be particularly relevant when the complexity of teaching increases as in school-industry partnerships.