It is vital that upper secondary students gain a rich and deep knowledge of sustainability issues, as they will enter adulthood and working life within a short time. The students belong to a generation that will be intensely involved in managing several environmental issues to achieve sustainable development for our Earth. However, earlier…

UNESCO has identified education for sustainable development (ESD) as a key factor in the achievement of sustainable development goals (SDGs). Education is important in developing awareness of how to preserve natural ecosystems and promote the uptake of renewable energy sources. Ecology education in primary school aims to give students a scientific…

Connectedness to nature (C2N) shows a positive relationship with many factors supporting children's health, wellbeing, and development. In addition, C2N has been shown to have a positive relationship with learning about and caring for nature. Despite a long history of outdoor education in early childhood settings in Sweden, C2N is not a concept…

Take a selection of balls and marbles along to a nearby playground slide and let students investigate factors that may influence how balls accelerate down an inclined plane. Students can make hypotheses in small groups, plan investigations to test multiple possible explanations and draw conclusions about the importance of different variables. The…

Numerous initiatives are carried out across the world to support science teaching in early childhood education. However, professional development research shows that in order for teaching interventions to bring about successful changes in practice, it is key that teacher's beliefs, confidence and knowledge change. As a complement to studies…

This article examines the affordances and limitations of textbooks for promoting action competence for sustainable development. Based on a content analysis of Swedish lower secondary level textbooks in geography and biology, we investigated how content about sustainable development is organised and formulated, the ways its multidimensional…

In this study, we have explored the ways in which small-group work in science can contribute to strengthen multilingual students' subject language and conceptual development when working with language-oriented classroom activities in primary classrooms. The aim is to determine whether it is possible to identify factors in interactions in…

In the context of higher education in Sweden, we see how major policy change is forming the field of Education Sciences. This change has promoted an increased focus on competitiveness, while reducing inefficiencies in mass-education. It has given legitimacy to specific recruitment strategies and career paths, but can also explain what determines…

Marie Ståhl and Anita Hussénius have defined what discourses dominate national tests in chemistry for Grade 9 in Sweden by using feminist, critical didactic perspectives. This response seeks to expand the results in Ståhl and Hussénius's article "Chemistry inside an epistemological community box!--Discursive exclusions and inclusions in the…

It has long been argued that nature of science (NOS) is an important part of science teaching. In the literature, many different approaches to NOS have been suggested. This article focuses on a storytelling approach, and builds on data from audio recordings from three middle-school (school year 6) classrooms. The three science classes are run by…

National goals and performance standards were introduced in Sweden during the 1990s as part of a curriculum reform. The intention was to detect shortcomings among students and provide support to those students who did not reach the passing grade in one (or several) subject/s. Despite this reform, approximately one-fourth of the students do not…

According to the curricula in various countries, teachers in the subject areas of science, social science and language are often expected to collaborate on cross-curricular issues such as sustainable development (SD) in the 9-year compulsory school. This study is based in Sweden and investigates teachers' teaching traditions. The overall aim of…

This article presents the evaluation of a two-year action research project in biology and mathematics teaching involving a primary school and a university in Sweden. The aim of the study was to contribute knowledge about a school-university intersection as a professional learning arena. The teachers' conceptions about the project implementation,…

In many countries' policy documents and curricula, teachers in the subject areas of science, social science and language are encouraged to collaborate on cross-curricular issues such as sustainable development (SD). This study is conducted in secondary schools (compulsory years 7-9) in Sweden and investigates the similarities and differences in…

During the past decade, early childhood teachers have been faced with new needs to develop their content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) for different science subject areas. In order to meet these challenges there is a strong need for professional learning programmes for early childhood teachers that focus on the development of…