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We explored the potential for addressing nature of science through a historic narrative about disagreement between researchers concerning a socio-scientific issue, incidence of juvenile thyroid cancer following the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident. The narrative was developed from authentic sources and tested in two cycles. Eight groups of three to four high-school students were audio recorded. Transcripts were analyzed regarding what nature of science emerged in the discussions and what understanding about NOS could be discerned, using three complementary NOS-frameworks (Consensus-NOS, Whole Science-NOS, FRA-NOS). Together, the student groups touched upon 19 different NOS-themes as they tried to make sense of the disagreement related in the narrative. All groups addressed a common core of NOS-themes, most of which were central to the narrative itself, although some themes that were not part of the narrative also emerged. Students displayed a basic understanding of the tentative, empirical, and subjective nature of science together with the role of evidential relevance and completeness of evidence related to the choice of scientific methods. On the other hand, students did not reckon with peer review as a means for establishing knowledge and resolving disagreement. Moreover, although students readily accepted disagreement as a basic property of science, they had difficulty handling this disagreement when coping with the SSI in the narrative. We discuss how the combination of history of science-in-the-making and SSI in narrative form offers opportunities to teach NOS without risking simplified messages of how scientific knowledge develops or how science can be used to address socio-scientific issues.

We present an empirically based model for modeling the quality of pre-service teacher reflection. Conversations from twelve groups of a total of 47 pre-service teachers were video recorded and transcribed verbatim. First, we analyzed their conversations through practical epistemology analysis and an operationalization of Dewey's definition of reflection to identify the moments of reflection that appeared in the pre-service teachers' talk. Thereafter, we employed Dewey's reflective attitudes, responsibility, open-mindedness and whole-heartedness, with the aim of understanding their roles in moments of reflection and how they relate to the quality of reflection. Our results show that the reflective attitudes played different roles and based on these roles and on particular patterns of the attitudes in our data it was possible to use them for modeling the quality of the pre-service teachers' reflection. We suggest that presence of all of the attitudes corresponds to higher quality than absence of any of them. Moreover, identifying absence of one or more attitudes in PSTs' reflection makes it possible to explicitly talk about what aspects of the reflection that should be improved, and why. Our results contribute with a first tentative model which may support teacher educators work with the development of pre-service teachers' reflective practice.

Research is needed to explain in more depth what happens and why in teacher-researcher collaboration. Previous research on collaboration points out issues such as asymmetric power relations and cultural differences between professions that can potentially cause problems. This paper examines a Swedish action research project in which teachers and researchers worked together to write a textbook for pre-service teacher education. To study the collaboration, theory on recognition was used to interpret how teachers and, to some extent, researchers understand and value themselves and each other's participation and contribution. Data was collected from a two-day dialogue meeting in the middle of the process where teachers and researchers met to discuss their on-going writing. The result shows that, through well-structured dialogues, the participants transformed their understanding and valuing of both themselves and others in relation to the task of producing new didactical knowledge. This is interpreted as transformed self-recognition for the teachers, who started to acknowledge themselves as knowledge producers. This transformation was crucial for developing the mutual recognition through which new didactical knowledge emerged as a result of the collaboration.

In the current debate, there is no consensus on the relationship between knowledge and values in students' reasoning and argumentation in socio-scientific and sustainability issues, i.e. if these should be addressed as separate entities or rather treated as a whole. In this study, we address this question empirically, with students engaging in two language games -- aesthetic and epistemological -- as they deliberate on ethical issues associated with genetic engineering. The study reports on a course unit that includes lectures, group work and student-led value-clarification exercises. The ways in which the language games interact were analysed using the established methods of Practical Epistemology Analysis (PEA) and analysis of Deliberative Educational Questions (DEQ). Our results show that aesthetic and epistemological language games were intricately intertwined in the students' reasoning. Given this close entanglement, each language game was conducive to the development of the other and in so doing, deepened the understanding of the content as a whole.

We present an empirically based model for teaching about planning in pre-service science teacher education as part of on-campus courses. Planning is usually taught through the introduction of theoretically based planning models, but these models commonly assume a linear idea of planning that does not match how teachers go about planning. We examined how pre-service middle school science teachers planned a 20-minutes microteaching lesson on sustainable development. Six groups of pre-service teachers' conversations were video recorded, transcribed, and analyzed through practical epistemology analysis and deliberative educational questions, with the aim of extracting empirically based components of a model for teaching about planning. Our results confirm that the pre-service teachers' planning did not constitute a linear process. However, it still had certain regularities. In particular, all components of the planning model reappeared frequently, but were successively dealt with in new ways. Moreover, the pre-service teachers dealt with aspects of planning beyond those of the original model. These aspects concerned questions about (1) planning rules, (2) inauthenticity and (3) sources. We interpreted these aspects as additional components which, together with the original planning model, may constitute the beginnings of a general model for how to teach about planning in science teacher education.

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.

Although microteaching is a common approach to engaging preservice teachers in reflection on teaching in on-campus courses, this reflection is usually carried out as a separate part. We examined how preservice middle school science teachers reflected amid planning a 20-min microteaching unit on sustainable development. Six groups of preservice teachers were video recorded and their conversations transcribed. We used practical epistemology analysis to analyze moments of reflection in these conversations. The preservice science teachers recurrently engaged in reflection in the course of their planning, which led to changes in perspective concerning important aspects of how to plan teaching that may be considered central for preservice science teachers to learn during their teacher education. Preservice teachers' reflection was related to the openness of the task, as they had to make decisions about many different aspects of their teaching. Even aspects that are not on the table in a real-world setting, for instance having the possibility of deciding on the age of the target students, led to productive reflection and opportunities for learning. Our results contribute to increased awareness of the possibilities of microteaching for facilitating learning during planning. This may provide science teacher educators with better possibilities of supporting their preservice science teachers' reflective practice.

Anthropomorphisms are widespread at all levels of the educational system even among science experts. This has led to a shift in how anthropomorphisms are viewed in science education, from a discussion of whether they should be allowed or avoided towards an interest in their role in supporting students' understanding of science. In this study we examine the role of anthropomorphisms in supporting students' understanding of chemistry. We analyze examples from undergraduate students' discussions during problem-solving classes through the use of practical epistemology analysis (PEA). Findings suggest that students invoked anthropomorphisms alongside technical relations which together produced more or less chemically appropriate explanations. Also, anthropomorphisms constitute potentially productive points of departure for rendering students' explanations more chemically appropriate. The implications of this study refer to the need to deal with anthropomorphisms explicitly and repeatedly as well as to encourage explicit connections between different parts of the explanation - teleological as well as causal.

We present analyses of teacher professional growth during collaboration between science teachers and science education researchers, with special focus on how the differential assumption of responsibility between teachers and researchers affected the growth processes. The collaboration centered on a new conceptual framework introduced by the researchers, which aimed at empowering teachers to plan teaching in accordance with perceived purposes. Seven joint planning meetings between teachers and researchers were analyzed, both quantitatively concerning the extent to which the introduced framework became part of the discussions and qualitatively through the interconnected model of teacher professional growth. The collaboration went through three distinct phases characterized by how and the extent to which the teachers made use of the new framework. The change sequences identified in relation to each phase show that teacher recognition of salient outcomes from the framework was important for professional growth to occur. Moreover, our data suggest that this recognition may have been facilitated because the researchers, in initial phases of the collaboration, took increased responsibility for the implementation of the new framework. We conclude that although this differential assumption of responsibility may result in unequal distribution of power between teachers and researchers, it may at the same time mean more equal distribution of concrete work required as well as the inevitable risks associated with pedagogical innovation and introduction of research-based knowledge into science teachers' practice.

In this study, we explore the issues and challenges involved in supporting students' learning to discern relevant and critical aspects of determining oxidation states of atoms in complex molecules. We present a detailed case of an interaction between three students and a tutor during a problem-solving class, using the analytical tool of practical epistemology analysis (PEA). The results show that the ability to make relevant distinctions between the different parts of a molecule for solving the problem, even with the guidance of the tutor, seemed to be challenging for students. These shifts were connected to both purposes that were specific for solving the problem at hand, and additional purposes for general learning of the subject matter, in this case how to assign oxidation states in molecules. The students sometimes could not follow the additional purposes introduced by the tutor, which made the related distinctions more confusing. Our results indicate that in order to provide adequate support and guidance for students the tutor needs to consider how to sequence, move between, and productively connect the different purposes introduced in a tutor-student interaction. One way of doing that is by first pursuing the purposes for solving the problem and then successively introduce additional, more general purposes for developing students' learning of the subject matter studied. Further recommendations drawn from this study are discussed as well.

The development of professional identity during a short-track teacher education program is studied. This article presents how individuals with a strong background in natural sciences describe the teacher education in which they participate. Individual interviews were conducted with 6 student teachers with a doctorate in natural sciences and extensive work experience in science-related professions on 5 occasions during their teacher education. We suggest that shared ways of talking about education and teaching practice can be described as phases summed up as cautiously positive, rejection, acceptance, and complexity. It is argued that problems of development of professional identities can be understood in relation to the design of the teacher education under study, and failure to acknowledge the development of a professional identity as a science teacher among these student teachers is a question of a not unproblematic transformation of professional identities. Implications for teacher education are that the design of teacher education needs to consider a joint frame for the entire education, in particular the relation between practice and theoretical courses.

In this paper we present experiences from a joint collaborative research project which may be described as an encounter between a school science teaching practice and a university science didactics research practice. We provide narratives which demonstrate how the encounter between these two communities of practice interacted to produce hybridization between the two in terms of mutual influences, resulting in the conceptual and practical development of both communities of practice. We argue that what happened in the project suggests one way of reducing the gap between educational research and teaching through the emergence of practices where the roles of teachers and researchers become blurred.

This study explores first-year university students' reasoning as they learn to draw Lewis structures. We also present a theoretical account of the formal procedure commonly taught for drawing these structures. Students' discussions during problem-solving activities were video recorded and detailed analyses of the discussions were made through the use of practical epistemology analysis (PEA). Our results show that the formal procedure was central for drawing Lewis structures, but its use varied depending on situational aspects. Commonly, the use of individual steps of the formal procedure was contingent on experiences of chemical structures, and other information such as the characteristics of the problem given. The analysis revealed a number of patterns in how students constructed, checked and modified the structure in relation to the formal procedure and the situational aspects. We suggest that explicitly teaching the formal procedure as a process of constructing, checking and modifying might be helpful for students learning to draw Lewis structures. By doing so, the students may learn to check the accuracy of the generated structure not only in relation to the octet rule and formal charge, but also to other experiences that are not explicitly included in the formal procedure.

Leishmaniasis is among the world's most neglected diseases. Dogs are the main reservoirs/hosts of Leishmania infantum, causative agent of both canine and human visceral leishmaniosis. Canine leishmaniasis (CanL) represents a public health problem as one of the most prevalent zoonotic diseases worldwide. Current therapeutics present drawbacks; thus, there is a need for more effective, safer, and cheaper drugs. The aim of this study was to evaluate and to compare the efficacy of oral administration of artesunate or meglumine antimoniate/allopurinol in dogs with clinical leishmaniasis. Forty-two dogs with naturally occurring clinical leishmaniasis were included in this open-label, simple randomized positive-control clinical field trial with 6 months of follow-up. Dogs received meglumine antimoniate 100 mg/kg/day and allopurinol 30 mg/kg/day for 28 days (control group, n = 26) or artesunate 25 mg/kg/day for 6 days (test group, n = 16). The animals were evaluated for their clinical evolution, parasite load (by qPCR) and humoral response at different time points: 0, 30, 90, and 180 days after treatment. Data analyses showed a significant improvement in both groups in clinical scores, parasitemia and antibody titers after treatment. Compared to the control group, the artesunate group showed significantly lower clinical score (P = 0.0001), lower parasitemia (P = 0.0001) and antibody titers after 6 months of follow-up. Compared to baseline values, a rapid, significant reduction (P < 0.012) in antibody levels, 2.28- versus 3.04-fold for the control versus artesunate groups, respectively, was observed 30 days after treatment. Antibody levels continued to decrease further in the artesunate group, where 58% of cases became seronegative at the 6-month follow-up. All qPCR-positive dogs were negative after treatment with artesunate, while 14.3% remained positive with the appearance of two new cases in the control group. Artesunate was well tolerated, and no side effects were recorded. Treatment failures were similar in both groups with 27.27% (6/22), including 18.18% (4/22) mortality in the control group, versus 26.66% (4/15), including 13.33% (2/15) mortality in the artesunate group. This is the first report showing the potential of artesunate in the treatment of dogs with clinical leishmaniasis. Artesunate showed higher efficacy than the current first-line treatment for CanL without any adverse effects. It could be a good alternative chemotherapy for CanL, and may be considered for further studies in human leishmaniases. Further clinical trials are needed to confirm these findings, to determine if there are relapses after treatment and if dogs remain infective to sandflies, to define the ideal therapeutic dosage and duration of treatment with artesunate.

In this study, we examined how a teacher may make a difference to the way interest develops in a science classroom, especially for students from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds. We adopted a methodology based on the concept of "taste for science" drawing on the work of John Dewey and Pierre Bourdieu. We investigated through transcripts from video recordings how such a taste is socially constituted in a 9th grade (ages 15-16) science classroom, where there was evidence that the teacher was making a positive difference to students' post-compulsory school choice with regard to science. Salient findings regarding how this teacher supported students' interest are summarized. For example, the teacher consistently followed up how the students acknowledged and enjoyed purposes, norms, and values of the science practice and so ensuing that they could participate successfully. During these instances, feelings and personal contributions of the students were also acknowledged and made continuous with the scientific practice. The results were compared with earlier research, implications are discussed, and some suggestions are given about how these can be used by teachers in order to support student interest.

Cannabis sativa L. is a controversial crop due to its high tetrahydrocannabinol content varieties; however, the hemp varieties get an increased interest. This paper describes (i) the main categories of phenolic compounds (flavonoids, stilbenoids and lignans) and terpenes (monoterpenes and sesquiterpenes) from C. sativa by-products and their biological activities and (ii) the main extraction techniques for their recovery. It includes not only common techniques such as conventional solvent extraction, and hydrodistillation, but also intensification and emerging techniques such as ultrasound-assisted extraction or supercritical CO2 extraction. The effect of the operating conditions on the yield and composition of these categories of phenolic compounds and terpenes was discussed. A thorough investigation of innovative extraction techniques is indeed crucial for the extraction of phenolic compounds and terpenes from cannabis toward a sustainable industrial valorization of the whole plant.

In this article we respond to the discussion by Alexandra Schindel Dimick regarding how the taste analysis presented in our feature article can be expanded within a Bourdieuan framework. Here we acknowledge the significance of field theory to introduce wider reflexivity on the kind of taste that is constituted in the science classroom, while we at the same time emphasize the importance of differentiating between how taste is reproduced versus how it is changed through teaching. The contribution of our methodology is mainly to offer the possibility to empirically analyze changes in this taste, and how teaching can make a difference in regard to students' home backgrounds. However, our last two steps of our taste analysis include asking questions about how the taste developing in the classroom relates more widely in society. Schindel Dimick shows how these two steps can be productively expanded by a wider societal field analysis.

This article addresses the problem of treating generalizations of human activity as entities and structures that ultimately explain the activities from which they were initially drawn. This is problematic because it involves a circular reasoning leading to unwarranted claims explaining the originally studied activities of science teaching and learning. Unlike other fields within social science research, this problem has not been appreciated and discussed in the science education literature and the field thus needs to be reminded of it. A heuristic specifically developed for the purposes of this article is applied to two examples taken from a much-cited research in the field. Through the examples it is argued that the practice of creating entities out of generalizations of science classroom activities leads to a number of unintended consequences. It is further argued that the stated purposes in the two example articles would actually have been better served by investigating the entire processes through which the activities develop, as well as how the activities may change through teaching. The article concludes that through the search for explanations caused by underlying entities, science education research runs a risk of alienating its results from the activities from which it initially wanted to meliorate.

In this article, I make a case for the potential educative worth of distractions for learning science in the school laboratory. Distractions are operationalized as experiences lying outside the main purpose of the laboratory activity, thereby diverting students' attention from that purpose. Through a practical epistemology analysis, I examined in close detail the conversations of three groups of high school students trying to explain how a real galvanic cell works. The three groups experienced the same two distractions, (1) a nonworking light-emitting diode and (2) negative readings on a voltmeter. The analysis reveals how one of the groups, through a series of contingencies, successively made the two distractions continuous with the main purpose of the activity. In the remaining two groups, no such continuity was established. The results show that (a) experiences initially being distracting, perplexing, and confusing may indeed acquire significance for the students' possibilities of coping with the main purpose of the activity but that (b) the outcome is highly contingent on the particular experiences drawn upon by the students to cope with the distractions. Consequently, I discuss ways in which teachers may turn distractions encountered in laboratory activities into educative experiences for more than a few lucky students.

It is commonly argued that socio-economic inequalities can explain many of the differences in achievement and participation in science education that have been reported among countries and among schools within a country. We addressed this issue by examining (a) the relationship between variables associated with socio-economic background and application frequencies to the Swedish Natural Science Programme (NSP) in upper secondary school and (b) whether there are lower secondary schools in Sweden that seem to compensate for these variables. Data from Statistics Sweden (SCB) covering the whole population of 106,483 ninth-grade students were used to calculate the probability for each student to apply to the NSP. Our results indicate that the variables, such as parental educational level and grades, have explanatory power, but with varying effect for different subpopulations of students. For example, grades in mathematics have a greater impact than grades in science for females' choice of the NSP. The opposite holds for male students. Out of 1,342 schools, 158 deviated significantly from predicted, that is, the students in these schools applied to the NSP in greater or lesser extent than expected. The number of deviating schools is greater than predicted by pure random variation. This suggests that variables of socio-economic background are only a partial explanation of the application frequencies, and that the deviation needs to be investigated further. Our findings suggest that in order to understand why schools deviate positively and so compensate for the socio-economic background of their students, we need to study their practices more closely.

The purpose of this study is to use a comparative approach to scrutinize the common assumption that certain school science activities are theoretical and therefore particularly suited for engaging students with scientific ideas, whereas others are practical and, thus, not equally conducive to engagement with scientific ideas. We compared two school science activities, one (laboratory work) that is commonly regarded as focusing attention on artefacts that may distract students from central science concepts and the other (concept mapping) that is thought to make students focus directly on these concepts. We observed students in either a laboratory activity about real galvanic cells or a concept-mapping activity about idealized galvanic cells. We used a practical epistemology analysis to compare the two activities regarding students' actions towards scientific ideas and artefacts. The comparison revealed that the two activities, despite their alleged differences along the theory-practice scale, primarily resulted in similar student actions. For instance, in both activities, students interacted extensively with artefacts and, to a lesser extent, with scientific ideas. However, only occasionally did students establish any explicit continuity between artefacts and scientific ideas. The findings indicate that some of the problems commonly considered to be unique for school science practical work may indeed be a feature of school science activities more generally.

Research is needed to explain in more depth what happens and why in teacher-researcher collaboration. Previous research on collaboration points out issues such as asymmetric power relations and cultural differences between professions that can potentially cause problems. This paper examines a Swedish action research project in which teachers and researchers worked together to write a textbook for pre-service teacher education. To study the collaboration, theory on recognition was used to interpret how teachers and, to some extent, researchers understand and value themselves and each other's participation and contribution. Data was collected from a two-day dialogue meeting in the middle of the process where teachers and researchers met to discuss their on-going writing. The result shows that, through well-structured dialogues, the participants transformed their understanding and valuing of both themselves and others in relation to the task of producing new didactical knowledge. This is interpreted as transformed self-recognition for the teachers, who started to acknowledge themselves as knowledge producers. This transformation was crucial for developing the mutual recognition through which new didactical knowledge emerged as a result of the collaboration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]