Learning democratic participation as future citizens is an important goal for science education for all students. To take part in debates and decision-making involving socioscientific issues, such as sustainability, students need to become aware of different positions and dilemmas regarding such issues. This study seeks to understand how…

According to previous research, in contemporary western societies health is seen as an increasingly non-political issue. Rather than being at the centre of collective decision-making and democratic politics, health is regarded as resting on individual responsibility. In this study we focus on, and explore an important and challenging…

When we think of communities of the future, we have to think of new social contracts between universities and society with a different ecology, and an intense compatibility towards transdisciplinarity. We know that today there is a need for truly fundamental reflections and questions on knowledge as the building block of global societies…

This paper reports on a study of how students' reasoning about socioscientific issues is framed by three dynamics: societal structures, agency and how trust and security issues are handled. Examples from gene technology were used as the forum for interviews with 13 Swedish high-school students (year 11, age 17-18). A grid based on modalities from…