How can teachers refne their strategies for purposefully engaging students in mathematicaldiscussions when students are working in groups and the teacher enters an ongoing groupconversation? In three educational design research cycles, four teachers collaborated witha researcher for one year to analyse, design and evaluate strategies for engaging students insmall-group mathematical discussions. The idea of noticing (Mason in Researching yourown practice: the discipline of noticing, RoutledgeFalmer, London, 2002; Sherin et al. inMathematics teacher noticing: seeing through teachers’ eyes, Taylor & Francis, New York,2011) was used to organize the fndings—by paying attention to aspects in the mathematical discussions and interpreting the interactions, teachers could together refne their ownactions/responses to better support students’ work. The Inquiry Co-operation Model ofAlrø and Skovsmose (Dialogue and learning in mathematics education: intention, refection, critique, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, 2004) was used as a theoreticalbase for understanding qualities in mathematical discussions. Ehrenfeld and Horn’s (EducStud Math 103(7):251–272, 2020) model of initiation-entry-focus-exit and participationwas for interpreting and organizing the fndings on teachers’ actions. The results show thatteachers became more aware of the importance of explicit instructions and their own role asfacilitators of mathematical questions to students, by directing specifc mathematical questions to all students within the groups. In this article, by going back and forth between whathappened in the teachers’ professional development group and in the classrooms, it waspossible to simultaneously follow the teachers’ development processes and what changedin students’ mathematical discussions.

This study investigated meaning-making of arrows in a representation of the greenhouse effect among 14-year-old secondary school students. Data was generated during Biology lessons where 74 students discussed how they interpreted a representation from the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation, which is an NGO that produce school material . The students were divided into 33 groups, who made written notes. In addition 12 groups were videotaped and eleven of these groups were interviewed a week later. The analysis focused on meaning-making of the arrows in the representation with the starting point that the arrows were represented in two distinctive ways, colour (yellow/orange) and shape (straight/curved/wavy). The result show that the colour yellow was strongly connected to the Sun whereas orange was connected to heat. The mode waviness made meaning-making more diverse and the coupling to the colour orange triggered interpretations about heat and different emissions and gases. One implication is that arrows are interpreted in the light of everyday experiences. In order to make sense in a more scientific way the arrows need unpacking and contextualisation. The overall connection between meaning-making and representation was captured by one group as: "It is an easy representation, if you understand it".

In recent years, the increased globalization has led to Swedish science classrooms, just as in the rest of Europe, involving a variety of languages and cultures, which places particular demands on science education. The use of the functionally scientific language is characterized by complexity, which often hinders students’ learning in science. For students whose first language is different than the language of instruction, this can be a great challenge. In this presentation, we relate to two studies – (1) a web-based vocabulary test, and (2) an ethnographic study of a translanguaging science classroom – to illustrate how multilingual students’ use of translanguaging can constitute a resource for science learning. The studies reveal that multilingual students move in loops between discursive and national languages in their conversations about the scientific content. The students commonly use their first language (Arabic) when moving toward an everyday discourse and use their second language (Swedish) when approaching the scientific discourse. Moreover, analyses show how the students often use both Swedish and Arabic to clarify semantic relationships between scientific words and concepts in translanguaging science classrooms (TSC). The students commonly express the subject-specific words in Swedish, while the descriptive, clarifying, interconnecting words and phrases describing the semantic relationships often are expressed in Arabic. In this way, both Arabic and Swedish become linguistic and cognitive tools when students learn science. With increased awareness of the complex subject-specific language and multilingual students’ use of their entire linguistic repertoires in a TSC, increased conditions for the development of significant pedagogical tool can be created that can help science educators frame learning in linguistically and culturally diverse classrooms and give students greater opportunities to participate in the science instruction contexts, to influence their learning situation and to put students in a position as co-constructors of their own learning.

Previous research has pointed to the benefits for students’ learning when language and literacy perspectives are included in science teaching. This extends the level of specific scientific vocabulary, but can be understood in a broader sense as increasing students’ competence of dynamically using registers in different functional contexts. In this paper, we explore teachers’ understanding of the role of language in science instruction and investigate which aspects of this role teachers emphasize when discussing students’ learning. The data consists of observations and documentation of teachers’ discussions during an in-service training course about language and literacy perspectives in science teaching. The analysis reveals the existence of different approaches or categories when it comes to including language perspectives in teaching science. The results suggest that teachers tend to interpret the inclusion of language and literacy perspectives as an increased focus on scientific concepts. Another common approach was to prompt students to replace everyday expressions with scientific ones. However, language and literacy perspectives comprise a wide range of aspects such as creating a relationship between everyday expressions and scientific language, understanding the use of hybrid languages and highlighting a general vocabulary. We conclude that there is a need to continue discussing how different aspects of language and literacy may help strengthen students’ engagement and learning in science.

This presentation will focus one result of a study that followed groups of teachers within an Erasmus+-partnership. The teachers conducted an interdisciplinary teaching about complex and controversial issues, including socio-scientific issues. Five schools, with students aged 12-16 years, in five different countries (Croatia, Poland, Italy, Sweden and Turkey) were involved. Through focus groups and participant observation, the study explored potential tensions that emerged during the enactment of the interdisciplinary teaching. Results show a variety of emerging tensions that might cause didactical dilemmas. The tensions are anchored both at different level, both concerning different types of curriculum goals and related to politics and religion, as well as those at the classroom level and at levels in between. One purpose of the study was to contribute to pre- and in-service teacher training and this resulted in a basis for a discussion tool. This tool is a didactic model aimed to raise awareness about both possibilities and potential negative consequences with different positions in didactical dilemmas. By means of abductive analysis, the empirical results of the study formed a basis for a model with four quadrant matrixes. In these matrixes, different tentative positions in didactical dilemmas are illuminated by fictional teachers that express statements about their position.