Environmental sustainability dilemmas may be perceived by students as unattainable and difficult to deal with. To circumvent this, research suggests employing encouraging principles such as empowerment, local ownership, collaboration, and resilience. In this study, we sought to explore middle-school students’ learning about science through engaging them in a co-creation process. This meant that fifth graders worked with local urban planning, water usage reduction and water pollution together with science professionals. The classroom observations were analysed through the framework of scientific habits of mind. The results pointed to that co-creation encouraged and enhanced discussions and created opportunities for the students to employ different aspects of science. The discussions were driven by the participants as a curiosity statement could lead to new utterances of rationality, objectivity or suspension of belief. This way of argumentation may socialise the students into a scientific way of reasoning and the interactions become opportunities for learning about science.

In this exploratory seminar we want to initiate a conversation about designing and implementingPhD programmes in science education in a time of increasingly intertwined social andenvironmental crises. As an example to think with we present experiences from a graduate school,with twenty PhD students in science and mathematics education across three Swedish universities.This graduate school is designed to address the challenges of educating younger generations fornavigating and transforming a complex world, where mathematical and scientific knowledgeintertwine in dealing with wicked problems. During the exploratory seminar the foundational ideasof the graduate school will be presented and two of the graduate school PhD students willexemplify with their work. Finally, all participants will engage in group discussions on how scienceeducation can stay relevant in a rapidly changing world, with particular focus on the consequencesfor postgraduate education.

Students are well aware of sustainability challenges such as global warming and pollution however they often express inability and agency to tackle these issues. In this study we explore how co-creation processes may affect students’ agencies and actions, but also what values co-creation may create. Fifth grade students and teachers collaborate with Natural Science professionals (NSP) around real-world problems from NSP vocations, for creation of new knowledge and inspire agency to the participants. 18 hours of video recordings were analysed according to Payne et al. (2007) and Ansell et al. (2022). The preliminary results suggest that co-creation processes create new knowledge for all participants but also personal and community values. Furthermore, co-creation seems to support taking action. 

År 2020 utformades en Science-profil på Gantofta skola. Syftet var att stimulera elevers studiemotivation till högre studier. Målet med denna artikels undersökning var att granska hur elevers attityder till högre studier inom naturvetenskap påverkades av stimulerande undervisning på Science-profilen. Högstadieeleverna som deltog hade en grundtanke kring sina gymnasieval och resultaten visar att säkerheten kring deras framtidsval ökar i de högre årskurserna. Eleverna i årskurs nio som funderat på att studera vidare inom naturvetenskap stärks i sina tankar efter deltagande på en Science-profil. Pedagogers engagemang för undervisningen samt möten med verksamma forskare i autentiska miljöer stärker elevers intressen för det aktuella ämnet. Resultaten visar även att elever med högt science capital är mer motiverade och positiva till högre studier jämfört med elever som har ett lågt science capital. Slutsatsen av vårt utvecklingsarbete är att vi kan se att undervisningen på en Science-profil påverkar elevers attityder till högre studier på olika sätt.

Integrative approaches to education have aroused interest within the international agenda in relation to the complexity of environmental issues (Rieckmann, 2017). Environmental projects open possibilities to integrate several school subjects and could enable students meaning-making and action-taking. This poster is an attempt to understand the meaning of trans-disciplinarity in educational research in relation to environmental issues, considering a pluralistic approach to embrace and understand perspectives from several actors. Science research has studied factors affecting students’ engagement and the value of scientific literacy and citizenship for progress and agency (DeWitt et al., 2016; Moote et al., 2020). Science capital is a framework that can be used for explaining the nature and pattern of aspirations and educational participation which are affected by internal factors, interest and motivation, as well as external factors, teaching methods and interactions with family, students, and teachers. These factors have the potential to influence a young person’s identity, prospective participation and societal engagement (Godec et al., 2018). In mathematics education the Critical Mathematics Educational framework (Barwell & Hauge, 2021), presents a trans-disciplinary model based on the so-called post-normal-science and Skovsmose’s work on reflective knowing. In this poster we aim to analyze students' critical understanding of the role of mathematics and science on environmental issues such as Climate Change and to contribute to the preparation of future citizens who could act upon unsolved problems. We argue that trans-disciplinarity can open possibilities of accumulation of science capital and can generate interest in science, mathematics, and STEM careers. This can be done through active participation by actors outside academia in educational settings through collaborative projects with teachers, students, and researchers (Block et al., 2019; Wright, 2021). We visualize transdisciplinary approaches of education in our chaotic times as an antidote of salvation and as a possibility to understand and tackle the problems from different angles in an affirmative way. We imagine this to be one way of supporting students in putting education and knowledge in a larger, societal setting.

Relevance of science literacy and citizenship has bloomed during the last century due to the growing awareness of wicked problems. The increasing consciousness has resulted in international governmental agreements on integrated goals to collaborate on reversing these negative affects by using science and innovation. This, according to research, makes science and sustainability capital, for example knowledge, creativity and skills, essential for society’s development towards sustainable collaborations. Studies show that few students choose natural science education in higher education or careers which has resulted in staff shortage in science professions, something that is estimated to continue in the coming years. The reason for this is that students feel that science is for nerdy, smart and hardworking students, these attitudes affect students who don´t identify themselves as belonging to those groups making them feel inadequate as future science citizens. These feelings of inadequacy contribute to the diminishing interest in science and the relevance of science for future studies, vacancies and society. The aim of this PhD project is to explore how students experience the relevance of science education by using participatory processes as a method to introduce students in middle school to different science professions and thereby promote students’ science and sustainability capitals. The intention is to collaborate with teachers and science professionals and explore how students interests and attitudes towards natural science subjects are affected by creative, co-creation activities that are integrated in their subjects and that allow students to take action in society.

Forskning visar att kontakt med arbetslivet i undervisningen är en viktig förutsättning för att eleverna skafå konkreta erfarenheter av betydelsen för deras val av fortsatt utbildning och yrkesinriktning. Samverkanmellan skola- arbetsliv, även kallad SSA, i skolans undervisning kan berika lärandemiljön och bidra tillhögre undervisningskvalitet samt ämnenas meningsfullhet för eleverna. Skolan ska förbereda elever för enarbetsmarknad i förändring och vilket gör samverkan skola- arbetsliv till ett verktyg för trendspaning. I Helsingborgsstad arbetar Marlene Klit Welin som SYV strateg med att utveckla studie- och yrkesvägledningen ikommunala grund- och gymnasieskolor. På Gantofta skola jobbar Vildana Basic som förstelärare i SSA. Honansvarar för att samordna en SSA grupp på skolan som ska utveckla och inspirera skolans pedagoger inomskola -arbetsliv genom kollegialt lärande. I denna undersökning strävar vi mot att ta reda på vilka framgångsfaktorersom främjar karriärlärandet kopplat till:1) styrning och ledning2) organisering och systematisk samverkan mellan skolan och omvärlden.