Maria Andrée

Marketing the ‘Broad Line’: Invitations to STEM education in a Swedish recruitment campaign

In many Western societies, there is a concern about the tendency of young people not choosing Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education and occupations. In response, different initiatives have been launched. If one believes that science should have a place in more young peoples lives, an important question is to what extent recruitment campaigns communicate messages that open up for STEM education to become relevant in young peoples identity formation. Here, we analyse a Swedish government-initiated, primarily Internet-based recruitment attempt (‘The Broad Line Campaign’) aimed at increasing the number of young people choosing the natural science programme in upper secondary school. The campaign is based on marketing principles and deliberately draws on identity issues. The data analysed consists of campaign films and written resources describing the campaign. Data are analysed by use of the constant comparative approach in order to produce categories describing different messages about why to engage in STEM education. These messages are then analysed from an identity perspective using the concept of subjective values. Our results show that the messages communicated in the Broad Line campaign emphasise utility value, attainment value and relative cost rather than interest-enjoyment. The campaign communicates that the natural science programme is to be associated with a high attainment value without establishing relations to the field of science. Finally, potential consequences of the communicated messages in the campaign are discussed in light of previous research.

Ways of Using ‘Everyday Life’ in the Science Classroom

Connecting science to students’ everyday life experiences is an important theme in science education discourse. The aim of this article is to explore in what ways ‘everyday life’ is used in the science classroom and what problems are solved through the use of ‘everyday life’. The research approach is ethnographic. Data was gathered through participant observation during one semester, in two Swedish science classes. Results show that ‘everyday life’ is brought into the classroom and made into school tasks within different types of activities; enculturation into science, education of scientifically literate citizens and making science interesting. The results underscore the importance of understanding the use of ‘everyday life’ in science classrooms as embedded in science classroom practice.

Political Rationalities in Science Education: A Case Study of Teaching Materials Provided by External Actors

Many Western societies have a tendency to talk about how schools are failing in the science subjects. School science is often discussed as outdated, not interesting enough for young people and non-effective for the students’ learning. This discourse opens up for external actors such as industrial actors and NGOs to engage in the teaching of science. One example of this is when these actors provide teaching materials. Thus, “statework”, in terms of educational governance, becomes distributed within public and private networks. One example which is analysed in this chapter can be found with the web-based calculators from the environmental organisation, WWF, and the energy company, E.ON; both are used for calculating ecological footprints. The aim is to analyse what political rationalities are invited into classrooms through these ecological footprint calculators and by what means. Our analysis targets how a specific kind of citizen is “made up” through a “centre of calculations”, and what political ideology influences the making of a sustainable citizen. This is achieved through looking into how the desirable citizen is governed through the technologies of accounting, debt and ethics. Through the accuracy of numbers and the bookkeeping of debt, the calculators produce a specific ethical approach. As a result, they suggest that becoming a responsible person is achieved through individual consumption choices rather than taking the issues to the political level. This distributed statework opens up for neoliberal economic and ideological interests to enter the classroom. We claim that it is of the utmost importance that teachers and educational policy-makers be made aware of the governing elements behind the teaching materials provided by external actors.

Borders/Border Crossing

Border crossing provides a lens for analyzing science learning as cultural acquisition and science teaching as cultural transmission. Thus, science is deemed as culture rather than absolute truth. ...

Affordances and Constraints of Using the Socio-Political Debate for Authentic Summative Assessment

This article reports from an empirical study on the affordances and constraints for using staged socio-political debates for authentic summative assessment of scientific literacy. The article focuses on conditions for student participation and what purposes emerge in student interaction in a socio-political debate. As part of the research project, a socio-political debate was designed for assessing student competences of scientific literacy in classroom practices. The debate centred on a fictive case about a lake where a decline in the yield of fish had been established. The students were assigned the task of participating in the debate from appointed roles as different stakeholders. Data were collected with video recordings of the enacted student debates. Student participation was analysed with the theoretical framework of communities of practice. The results show that multiple conflicting purposes of the socio-political debate as an assessment task emerged. The emergent purposes were (1) putting scientific knowledge on display versus staying true to ones role, (2) putting scientific knowledge on display versus expressing social responsibility, (3) putting scientific knowledge on display versus winning the debate, and (4) using sources tactically versus using sources critically. As these purposes emerged in classroom practice, tensions between different ways of enacting participation in the debates became manifest. Based on these findings, this article discusses the affordances and constraints for using a socio-political debate for classroom-based assessment of scientific literacy and argumentation in terms of validity, reliability and affordability.