Veli-Matti Vesterinen

A novel course of chemistry as a scientific discipline:how do prospective teachers perceive nature of chemistry through visits to research groups?

To achieve sufficient pedagogical content knowledge on nature of chemistry related issues, teachers need structured opportunities for reflection and discussion. One way to provide those opportunities is through teacher-scientist interaction. This study is based on reflective essays of thirty prospective teachers who participated in a new course about the nature of chemistry and its implications for teaching, organized by the Chemistry Teacher Education Unit in the Department of Chemistry. As a part of the course, prospective teachers visited various research groups, discussed chemical research with the researchers, and wrote reflective essays about their experiences. The nature of chemistry related issues the students perceived when participating in teacher-scientist interaction during these visits were identified from their essays by qualitative content analysis. According to this analysis, students made observations about i) chemical research as an inquiry, ii) the collaborative nature of chemical research, and iii) the relationship of chemical research and society. The visit provided prospective teachers with opportunities for reflection on several ideas-about-science central to understanding the nature of chemistry. However, teacher-scientist interaction and research group visits are not an all-inclusive context for teaching nature of science related issues in chemistry. For some issues, a historical approach or the discussion and critical evaluation of the scientific arguments seemed to be more fruitful ways of approaching the topics.

Toward citizenship science education : what students do to make the world a better place?

ABSTRACT With increased focus on sustainability and socioscientific issues, dealing with issues related to citizenship is now seen as an important element of science education. However, in order to make the world a better place, mere understanding about socioscientific issues is not enough. Action must also be taken. In this study, 35 international gifted students—potential scientists—aged 15–19 were interviewed to investigate what they were doing to make the world a better place. The interviews were analyzed using qualitative content analysis with focus on students’ actions toward a better world, their rationalizations for such actions, and the role of science in the rationalizations. The analysis shows that students consciously take a wide range of actions, and that they see citizenship as a process of constant self-development. The three categories created to highlight the variation in the ways students take action were personally responsible actions, participatory actions, and preparing for future. Although many students saw that science and scientists play a big role in solving especially the environmental problems, most of them also discussed the structural causes for problems, as well as the interplay of social, economic, and political forces. The results indicate that citizenship science education should take the variety of students’ actions into consideration, give students the possibility to take individual and participatory action, as well as give students opportunities to get to know and discuss the ways a career in science or engineering can contribute to saving the world.

History, Philosophy, and Sociology of Science and Science-Technology-Society Traditions in Science Education: Continuities and Discontinuities

In the last decades, a great amount of research has advocated innovating science education through teaching contents of the history, sociology, and philosophy of science in order for the students to get a reliable image of science, significant and relevant learning experiences, and higher interest and engagement in science. Given the embeddedness of techno-scientific systems in contemporary societies, the science-technology-society (STS) movement suggested the simple initiative of teaching science through making explicit the interrelationships between science, scientists, technology, and society to achieve these aims. Since then, the STS tradition has evolved and produced some conceptual variations. This paper deals with three of these variations that are currently the key areas of school science education research and teaching: “socio-scientific issues,” “scientific literacy for all,” and “nature of science.” As heirs of the STS tradition, these mottos embody, at the same time, a clear continuity with STS origins, and some discontinuities, which arise from the development of their own paradigms, adding original elements to the STS movement.