Fostering Scientific Citizenship in an Uncertain World: Selected Papers from the ESERA 2021 Conference (Contributions from Science Education Research, 13) 303132224X, 9783031322242

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Contributions from Science Education Research 13

Graça S. Carvalho Ana Sofia Afonso Zélia Anastácio   Editors

Fostering Scientific Citizenship in an Uncertain World Selected Papers from the ESERA 2021 Conference

Contributions from Science Education Research Volume 13

Editor-in-Chief Manuela Welzel-Breuer, Heidelberg University of Education, Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany Editorial Board Members Costas K. Constantinou, University of Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus Niklas Gericke, University of Karlstad, Karlstad, Sweden Olivia Levrini, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy Isabel Martins, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Sonya Martin, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea (Republic of) Robin Millar, University of York, York, UK Iva Stuchlíková, University of South Bohemia, České Budějovice, Czech Republic Veli-Matti Vesterinen, University of Turku, Turku, Finland Albert Zeyer, Science Teacher Education, University of Teacher Education Lucerne, Lucerne, Switzerland

Contributions from Science Education Research is the international, multidisciplinary book series of the European Science Education Research Association (ESERA). The aim of the series is to synthesize, for the benefit of the scholarly community, the findings of high quality, theoretically-framed research in the domain of science education as well as comprehensive explorations of specific methodological strands in science education research. The series aims to publish books that are innovative in attempting to forge new ways of representing emergent knowledge in the field. The series includes edited collections of chapters, monographs and handbooks that are evaluated on the basis of originality, scientific rigor and significance for science education research. The book series is intended to focus mainly on work carried out in Europe. However, contributions from researchers affiliated with non-European institutions and non-members of the European Science Education Research Association are welcomed. The series is designed to appeal to a wide audience of researchers and post-graduate students in science education. Book proposals for this series may be submitted to the Publishing Editor: Claudia Acuna E-mail: Claudia. [email protected]

Graça S. Carvalho  •  Ana Sofia Afonso Zélia Anastácio Editors

Fostering Scientific Citizenship in an Uncertain World Selected Papers from the ESERA 2021 Conference

Editors Graça S. Carvalho CIEC, Institute of Education University of Minho Braga, Portugal

Ana Sofia Afonso CIEd, Institute of Education University of Minho Braga, Portugal

Zélia Anastácio CIEC, Institute of Education University of Minho Braga, Portugal

ISSN 2213-3623     ISSN 2213-3631 (electronic) Contributions from Science Education Research ISBN 978-3-031-32224-2    ISBN 978-3-031-32225-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32225-9 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Introduction

From the ESERA Conference 2021 to the Book This book is part of the book series Contributions from Science Education Research, published by Springer in partnership with the European Science Education Association (ESERA). It gathers a selection of papers presented at the 14th ESERA Conference under the theme Fostering scientific citizenship in an uncertain world. This conference, organised by the University of Minho, in Braga, Portugal, from 30 August to 3 September 2021, was held as an exclusively virtual conference due to the Coronavirus situation and travel restrictions at that time. This virtual modality brought together the international science education research community, which allowed sharing of research and engaging in discussion about the pressing issues in science education. Overall, 739 papers (out of which 32 were symposia) were presented at the Conference after passing a double-blind review process by two or three reviewers. The papers (single oral communications, interactive posters, workshops, symposia) were organised into 18 strands based on their topic. In addition, the Conference organisers invited five prominent researchers to give plenary talks. Furthermore, it included three memorial symposia honouring John K.  Gilbert’s legacy, Norman G. Lederman’s legacy, and Audrey Msimanga’s legacy. The virtual environment of the Conference did not prevent the organisation from arranging a social and cultural programme which included music, dance, and cooking moments and virtual excursions around Braga and other Portuguese tourist destinations. After the Conference, we asked for the strand chairs’ collaboration in selecting the three best papers from their strands, which they considered the most appropriate for inclusion in this book. For that, they were asked to select papers that attended to the following criteria: showing an interesting and genuine relationship with the Conference theme; being of scientific relevance; demonstrating methodological rigour; and showing originality of the approach and special capability to be visionary and inspirational. We, the editors, analysed this pool of recommended papers and invited authors to contribute their work to this book. In addition, we invited plenary session speakers to submit a manuscript to be considered for publication in v

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the book. As a result, we ended with 19 chapters, which underwent a rigorous scientific review process guided by the editors before being accepted into this volume in their final form.

An Overview of This Volume This book is composed of 19 chapters and is organised following the guiding thread of the ESERA Conference 2021. We believe this organisation provides coherence for the discerning reader who wants to immerse himself/herself in the depth of science education in challenging times. The book starts with two chapters (Chaps. 1 and 2) authored by keynote speakers who highlight the sense of uncertainty but with an eye on a hopeful future. The third chapter (Chap. 3) focuses on the importance of engaging initial teachers’ training in science education. The Nature of Science (NOS), an important component of scientific literacy, is approached in the fourth and fifth chapters (Chaps. 4 and 5), the former centred on students and the latter on a textbook analysis. The subsequent six chapters (Chaps. 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11) describe research in specific subjects: one on geography education, two on biology education, two on chemistry education, and the other on physics education. Some of these subjects are also touched on in other chapters. Two papers make a transition from specific topics to brain stimulus strategies: the paper on physics education that follows a question-answer line (Chap. 11) and a study including inquiry and argumentation in the early years (Chap. 12). Besides this, scientific argumentation (SA) and scientific inquiry (SI) are the focus of Chaps. 13 and 14. Subsequently, at this point, COVID-19 is called together with vaccination and pandemic conceptions. These issues establish the continuity and a cascade from SARS-CoV-2 infection, pandemic conceptions, vaccination/inoculation, and climate change (Chaps. 15, 16 and 17). The book closes with two chapters that tie up loose ends in the diversity of science education topics, showing that instead of any isolated subject, all converge for a significant learning and world-comprehensive evolution. Thus, Chap. 18 approaches a holistic view looking for a combination or coexistence of science, environment, and health. Finally, the last chapter (Chap. 19), written by two keynote speakers, reflects on the importance of science education as social justice and action in an informed and engaged citizenship. In order to familiarise the reader with the chapter contents, a summary of each one is presented subsequently, highlighting their focus, methods, samples, and future research directions.

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Highlights of the Chapters In the first chapter (Chap. 1), Cecília Galvão discusses collaboration and interdisciplinarity as core concepts to prepare young people to act as informed and responsible citizens. The author argues that these concepts have guided the effort to overcome current complex problems and that the critical analysis of reality can constitute an important exercise on an uncertain future that affects us. The discussion is supported by examples of science education for citizenship (a project (EEAGrants – Direção Geral da Política do Mar)) (Faria et al., 2019), the PhD in Sciences for sustainability from the University of Lisbon (Galvão et al., 2021), and the Cost Action on citizen science (Roche et al., 2020), which put in evidence the importance of the dialogue of different areas of knowledge to scientific citizenship. The second chapter (Chap. 2), by Jrène Rahm, makes a case for studying learning and identity in movement, resulting in an understanding and deep appreciation of the complex pathways and learning lives of youth, teachers, and community partners engaged in joint projects. Drawing on two research projects, the author emphasises how learning and becoming in and through relations in STEM is a lifelong process made up of a web of trails marked by historical, social, political, economic, and cultural constraints and processes of power. In light of the two examples, Rahm discusses how a mobility lens provides us with new tools to reimagine the joint design of innovative science learning and teacher education deeply committed to equity and social justice. Julie A. Luft, signing the third chapter (Chap. 3), discusses three benefits of educational researchers in teacher education studying newly hired science teachers. Hence, investigating this population sheds light on the efficacy of initial science teacher education programming, helps understand the teaching-learning process, and allows to assess the durability of their initial certification instruction. Findings from these studies provide new insights into teacher learning, which can result in new forms of preparation and support programming. In Chap. 4, Georgios Ampatzidis and Marida Ergazaki discuss the impact of a story-based learning environment on supporting university students’ understanding of NOS.  Students read fictional conversations between two eminent scientists, responded to story-based questions, and shared views with the class. The story-­ based learning environment was effective in supporting students’ understanding of NOS. Chapter 5 is authored by Beyza Okan and Ebru Kaya, who analysed NOS in the 8th-grade science textbook. Framed on “Reconceptualised Family Resemblance Approach to NOS”, the analysis of different textbook sections reveals that epistemic and cognitive categories are more frequent than social-institutional categories, and there is an unbalanced inclusion of the different categories in the different sections of the textbook. Hence, a more holistic representation of NOS is needed.

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Starting with geography education, in the sixth chapter (Chap. 6), Svenja Brockmüller considers it crucial to provide and evaluate methods to promote students’ systems thinking. The author compared students’ system competence development using analogue or digital soil erosion models or a combination of both. Framed on the dimensional “Freiburg heuristic competence model of systems thinking”, the analyses of variance showed significant group differences. Combined use of analogue and digital models for teaching is recommended to promote systems thinking in the context of soil erosion. Regarding biology education, in the seventh chapter (Chap. 7), Leroy Großmann and Dirk Krüger refer that writing lesson plans are part of pre-service teachers’ training, and because there are no objective criteria to assess them, they developed criteria to assess lesson plan quality. Their chapter describes the methodology of developing qualitative criteria with inductively identified performance level descriptions and presents one exemplary criterion for each qualifier dimension. Finally, implications for teaching lesson planning in teacher training are provided. Continuing biology education, in Chap. 8 Lisa-Maria Kaiser and collaborators analyse the influence of dissections, videos, and anatomical models on students’ state of interest and how these resources influence students’ state of interest differently, depending on the degree of disgust regarding dissections. They also found significant interaction effects on cognitive and emotional components of interests. Finally, the authors suggest that anatomical models might be an alternative to dissection for students with high disgust. Changing the theme, in Chap. 9, it can be seen that Sandra Pia Harmer and Katharina Gross developed guidelines for analysing chemical explanations videos, which lack superordinate quality control. The procedures included an in-depth literature study on media pedagogy, chemistry-specific content and pedagogical (content) knowledge, an analysis of videos on chemical bonding, and a students’ survey. The authors concluded that research is needed on using chemical explanation videos in chemistry classrooms to sensitise students in dealing with video sources. Also concerned with chemistry, in Chap. 10, Fabien Güth and Helena van Vorst focus on context-based learning as a method for differentiated instruction in chemistry education. Results show that groups of students differ in terms of their context choice, and situational interest, satisfaction. They suggest that further studies are needed to clarify the benefit in terms of learning outcomes or increased interest. In Chap. 11, Frédéric Bouquet and collaborators tested whether an immersive format could increase students’ engagement in experimental physics. Compared with teaching as usual, students’ emotional engagement was higher in the context of immersion, no behavioural or cognitive effects were found, and the teaching goals were achieved. They suggest further research in contexts in which students’ engagement is known to be poor. The study by Inés M. Bargiela and collaborators, in Chap. 12, explores the role of a teacher when early childhood students engage in inquiry and argumentation practices in the context of learning about forces. The work sheds light on the underexplored research area of teaching-based inquiry practices in early childhood education, providing evidence that it is necessary to reformulate the role of the teacher’s guidance as an integral part of inquiry-based teaching in early childhood.

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Continuing with argumentation, in Chap. 13, Jinglu Zhang and William J. Browne explore how items can be written to create a scientific argumentation (SA) assessment and what factors should be considered to improve SA assessment design. Based on Toulmin’s model and approaching the three SA competencies (SAC) identifying, evaluating, and producing, a five-round iterative process allowed the development of an assessment instrument. The authors found ten factors influencing the assessment and concluded by discussing on SAC assessment design guidelines. In Chap. 14, Verena Petermann and Andreas Vorholzer investigated how teachers use explicit instruction when planning lessons to foster students’ scientific inquiry (SI) competencies. Results showed that teachers often include opportunities for students to engage in various inquiry activities (e.g. planning, conducting, and analysing investigations). However, they rarely include explanations of SI concepts and tasks that demand stating, elaborating, or reflecting on them. Potential reasons for these findings and implications for professional development are discussed. Chapter 15 is the first entry on pandemic issues. Ruth Chadwick and Eilish McLoughlin identified the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on teaching science within the Irish primary curriculum. Teachers in this study reported several challenges when teaching science during this crisis, including the disengagement of pupils and their families and difficulties when facilitating science activities remotely. However, they also identified positive aspects, such as teacher professional development. Finally, recommendations for mitigating actions to lessen the negative impacts of the COVID-19 crisis are discussed. Continuing with COVID-19, in Chap. 16, Uwe Karsten Simon and Marc Brack reveal that adults and secondary students showed mediocre knowledge of COVID-19, knowledge gaps in the deep understanding of virology and vaccination, and several misconceptions. Knowledge was significantly correlated with the level of education/grade. Furthermore, lower-grade high school students performed significantly better than their same-age peers from middle school. Moreover, willingness to be vaccinated was significantly correlated with knowledge. In Chap. 17, Thomas Schubatzky and Claudia Haagen-Schützenhöfer show that adolescents are susceptible to present misinformation targeted at the scientific consensus regarding climate change, even in the presence of accurate information. Inoculation treatment led to pre-emptively protecting adolescents against that misinformation and to an increase in the adolescents’ consensus estimate, and their belief certainty in their estimate increased. The authors recommend future climate change education research to elaborate on possible applications of inoculation theory in climate change education or other socially controversial issues. In Chap. 18, Albert Zeyer and colleagues present the new concept of science pedagogy, Science|Environment|Health (S|E|H). The authors consider holism an essential view of S|E|H and the Two-Eyed-Seeing concept as the basis for scientific holism. The text refers to a symposium with three contributions, conceptualises Two-Eyed-Seeing in S|E|H, and discusses consequences for teaching and research in science education. Finally, the authors suggest that this topic may be an extension of socio-scientific issues. The book ends with Chap. 19, where Christina Siry and Hagop Yacoubian discuss how working towards social justice, as a uniting theme to science education,

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can transform contexts of learning and support students in developing values relevant to making informed decisions and taking action. From understanding that science is embedded within social, cultural, and political systems, the authors elaborate on how they envision science education contributing to preparing an informed and engaged citizenry. In addition, supported by their distinct current research projects, they discuss what can be learnt from coming together across differences. Thus, by gradually unveiling the contents of this book, we hope to have awakened readers’ desire to know each chapter in detail. Indeed, we hope you enjoy reading this book as a moment of deep learning, like it was, for us, organising and holding the ESERA Conference 2021 in a context as atypical as it was rewarding. CIEC (Research Centre on Child Studies), Institute of Education University of Minho Braga, Portugal

Graça S. Carvalho

CIEd (Research Centre on Education), Institute of Education University of Minho Braga, Portugal

Ana Sofia Afonso

CIEC (Research Centre on Child Studies), Institute of Education University of Minho Braga, Portugal

Zélia Anastácio

Contents

1

Unpredictability and Uncertainty … How Can Science Education Inspire Young People to Act for Citizenship? ��������������������    1 Cecília Galvão

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Learning and Becoming in Movement: A Conceptual Lens to Research in Science Education, Committed to Fostering Scientific Citizenship in an Uncertain World����������������������������������������   15 Jrène Rahm

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Looking Toward the Future: Learning from Investigations with Newly Hired Science Teachers��������������������������������������������������������   29 Julie A. Luft

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Teaching Nature of Science Through Stories Based on the History of the Balance of Nature Idea: Insights from the First Cycle of a Developmental Study����������������������   43 Georgios Ampatzidis and Marida Ergazaki

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A Content Analysis of the Representation of the Nature of Science in a Turkish Science Textbook����������������������������������������������   63 Beyza Okan and Ebru Kaya

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Structure and Measurement of System Competence: Promoting Systems Thinking Using Analogue and Digital Models ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������   79 Svenja Brockmüller

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Identifying Performance Levels of Enacted Pedagogical Content Knowledge in Trainee Biology Teachers’ Lesson Plans����������������������������������������������������������������������������   95 Leroy Großmann and Dirk Krüger

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Oh, No: That’s Disgusting! Influence of Disgust and Different Teaching Methods on Students’ State of Interest����������  117 Lisa-Maria Kaiser, Cornelia Stiller, and Matthias Wilde

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How Suitable Are Explanation Videos for the Chemistry Classroom? Analysing and Evaluating an Explanation Video on Metal Bonding ����������������������������������������������  135 Sandra Pia Harmer and Katharina Groß

10 Context-based  Learning as a Method for Differentiated Instruction in Chemistry Education������������������������������������������������������  153 Fabien Güth and Helena van Vorst 11 Using  Fiction in Physics’ Laboratories to Engage Undergrad Students��������������������������������������������������������������  171 Frédéric Bouquet, Julien Bobroff, Ulysse Delabre, Philippe Barberet, Vincent Berry, Geneviève Allaire-Duquette, and Marine Moyon 12 Inquiry  and Argumentation Practices Enacted by Early Students in an Inquiry Cycle About Gravity and Air Friction�������������������������������������������������������������������������  183 Inés M. Bargiela, Blanca Puig, Paloma Blanco-Anaya, and Lucy Avraamidou 13 An  Approach to Generating Guidelines for Designing Scientific Argumentation Competence Assessments����������������������������  201 Jinglu Zhang and William J. Browne 14 Teachers’  Use of Explicit Instruction When Planning Lessons to Foster Students’ Scientific Inquiry Competencies����������������������������  219 Verena Petermann and Andreas Vorholzer 15 Irish  Primary Teachers’ Perspectives on the Challenges and Positives of Teaching Science During the COVID-19 Crisis��������������������������������������������������������������������������������  235 Ruth Chadwick and Eilish McLoughlin 16 Virus-Related  Knowledge in Pandemic Times: Results from Two Cross-Sectional Studies in Austria and Implications for Secondary Education ������������������������������������������  259 Uwe Karsten Simon and Marc Bracko 17 I noculating Adolescents Against Climate Change Misinformation��������������������������������������������������������������������������  275 Thomas Schubatzky and Claudia Haagen-Schützenhöfer

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18 Two-Eyed  Seeing and Scientific Holism in A New Science|Environment|Health Pedagogy��������������������������������������������������  293 Albert Zeyer, Nuria Álvaro, Christina Claussen, Carolin Enzingmüller, Valentín Gavidia, Claes Malmberg, Olga Mayoral, Ilka Parchmann, Anders Urbas, and Kerstin Kremer 19 Coming  Together Across Differences: The Uniting Role of Social Justice in Science Education����������������������������������������������������  311 Christina Siry and Hagop Yacoubian

Chapter 1

Unpredictability and Uncertainty … How Can Science Education Inspire Young People to Act for Citizenship? Cecília Galvão

1.1 Introduction I’ll start with a personal story. “I was walking in the Calouste Gulbenkian park in Lisbon, and I came across a pair of geese from Egypt with a litter of 7 babies. There were also several couples of people with children watching the animals pecking at the grass. Suddenly a boy about four years old with a long leaf in his hand started trying to hit the geese, scaring them and making their parents scold them without success. The adult geese tried to attack the boy, but he wouldn’t stop. When he passed by me, I said, “don’t do that, they just want to have breakfast in peace”. He stopped, looked at me very seriously and said, “OK, so I’m just going to play with this leaf” and walked away. I was surprised by the effectiveness of my intervention, I didn’t expect it to have that effect. I felt collaborating with the parents by giving the boy another perspective on the situation. Above all, I felt that I had seized the opportunity and the right moment to intervene”.

This is a simple story that apparently has nothing to do with the central concepts I intend to discuss. But it made me think that sometimes collaboration and interdisciplinarity are based on the ability to show different perspectives to others. And as Rovelli (2019) said, Science is reading the world from an ever-widening point of view. We are currently living in unpredictable days, full of uncertainty, taking into account the experience of an unresolved pandemic and information about a future with harmful climate change, loss of biodiversity and energy problems. The knowledge achieved is, without a doubt, of a great level, with science having projections with the creation of vaccines and with advanced scientific data in several areas to C. Galvão (*) Instituto de Educação da Universidade de Lisboa; Instituto de Saúde Ambiental da Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade de Lisboa (ISAMB), Lisboa, Portugal e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 G. S. Carvalho et al. (eds.), Fostering Scientific Citizenship in an Uncertain World, Contributions from Science Education Research 13, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32225-9_1

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which the population has increased access. Despite this, misinformation, false news, and credibility in unreliable information is a threat. It is necessary to counter these perspectives, and starting with younger and younger children in school is perhaps a good start. I will try to reflect on our role as science educators. I’ll do that by taking as basis three examples coming from research. I will use three published articles, and what I present here is just a summary of each one.

1.1.1 A Starting Point Networks through the web expand and distribute knowledge, blurring the boundaries of countries. Likewise, the evolution of the study of the brain, emotions and the relationship between biology and learning will make that, within 50 years, our current knowledge seems primitive (Natriello, 2007). Cognitive science, in its current trends, has brought about the way we learn and perceive the world, which calls into question the conception of knowledge as a set of propositions composed of classical concepts. In this perspective, knowledge is seen as an amalgamation of confusing concepts, contextualised, based on perception and expressed in strongly metaphorical and narrative language (Klein, 2006). This way of perceiving the world, at the same time contextualised, globalised and dispersed, integrating information from diverse sources, contradicts the generally linear way presented in school classes or textbooks, challenging the traditional view that knowledge is translated into concepts and words represent these. Teachers are fundamental to helping students to deal with complex problems, giving them the opportunity to understand them from several perspectives. European Commission (2007, 2015); UNESCO  (2015) states that teachers should develop critical teaching strategies, organise challenging learning environments, and give careful support to students from the perspective of self-regulation and learning based on problem-solving and decision-making, helping them to live on a planet under pressure. Complex problems must be faced with creativity. Science Education can contribute to a necessary creative dimension, stimulating the capacity for reasoning and imagination. The school has the responsibility to stimulate students by providing situations from a very early age so that the creative capacity of each one develops to the maximum of their potential. Interdisciplinarity appears as a solution to fragmented, decontextualised training and for the development of teamwork skills required to solve complex problems. Hence, the need for new knowledge results from the conscious merger and symbiosis of the perspectives of and information from science, economics, technology and politics (Mitcham & Frodeman, 2003). Collaboration processes are the most important also, crossing the physical, social, health and computing sciences in a true team science not limited to a particular field (Fiore et al., 2017). It is important to note that Johnson et al. (2014) indicate that, in addition to school performance, collaborative learning processes have positive consequences for different significant

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educational objectives, such as the quality of interpersonal relationships, group probity, social cohesion and trust, or even full integration and a sense of belonging to the collective school.

1.1.2 Some Examples to Promote Scientific Understanding The cases I want to share are part of this relationship between school and community, using knowledge from different areas to build new knowledge. They are all different, but they are based on the concepts of collaboration and interdisciplinarity in a connection between science and citizenship. The Portuguese Roadmap Discoveries This example relates to a project “The Portuguese roadmap discoveries” (project ‘Roteiro dos Descobrimentos’, PT02_2°RPS_0017), developed at the University of Lisbon (Faria et al., 2019). This study had as its main objectives to promote a closer relationship between people, and children in particular, with the city of Lisbon, to promote culture in its various dimensions. The “Roteiro dos Descobrimentos” was developed in digital format by creating a computer application that can be downloaded on any mobile technology (mobile phones, PDAs, etc.) for devices with the Android operating system and is aimed at young children to use in the school context or in the family. The existing contents fall into some themes of the curriculum of the first and second cycle of basic education. The App was conceived by a multidisciplinary team dealing with different areas of study: Environmental Studies, Geography and History of Portugal, Portuguese Language, Natural Sciences, Cultural Sciences and Technologies of Communication. These areas were fundamental to creating the itineraries throughout the city of Lisbon: The city in the time of the discoveries; A city of nations and cultures; From land into the sea; and Monsters and other sea life. Students, teachers, and families would follow these itineraries. The possible situations students had to solve were from Astronomy, Languages and Culture of the World, Natural Sciences, and the History of Portugal. Some of the exercises in the App are related to the expeditions of the discoveries: the preservation of food, the mix of cultures brought from those voyages and architectural styles according to maritime discoveries. There are also some exercises more related to science (e.g., “Place the fish in their correct habitats, near the bottom or in the water column. Remember the characteristics that you studied earlier” or “How can you help Bartolomeu Dias to find the North star?”). We wanted to know the impact of the App on students’ learning and appreciation. The study involved the participation of 131 students and eight teachers. Data were collected from participant observation, students’ questionnaires and interviews with students and teachers. Considering the general results:

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• The majority of students liked the application and the itineraries (N  =  127, 96.1%), considering it easy to use (N = 124, 94.4%). According to the analysis of the questionnaires: • students’ have learned new things with this application (N = 125, 94.4%); • considered that it was fun to learn about the topics in focus (N = 123, 88.6%) • it was an easier way to understand certain subjects (N = 123, 80.5%). In the interviews, they emphasised the different challenges they had to face and the need to mobilise some knowledge to solve them. Some comments show students liked to use the App and what they have learned: The things I liked most were taking pictures, learning more things about the topics that were there, and enjoying the interactive games. (4th grade) It was cool to try to answer the questions in the group and try to do a summary of the answer altogether. Each of us gave an opinion, and we reached a joint conclusion. (5th grade) It’s captivating and cool because we must go to look for the sites, take pictures of what we are learning and use our expertise. (5th grade) I would like to learn more about the itineraries followed by the navigators and what they do when reaching those countries. (4th grade) The way the App was written was quite simple, and it was easy to understand. If there had been a guide to explain everything, I would have ended up getting tired. (5th grade)

From the teachers’ comments, we can understand more deeply the kind of learning that was possible. Considering the App as a learning resource: It takes students to discover their city. We explored the App in the classroom, and I found that many of them were unaware of the place where they live. The collaboration between the participants and the deepening of the concept of gamification.

Considering students’ learning: First, the digital and technological literacy; secondly, the opportunity to look, observe and make more meaningful learning that results from the study visits or other situations. Reading/interpretation skills and search/select knowledge about monuments. In addition to the training of attention and memory. The notion of globalisation and interculturality.

Considering the App in the educational context: It is, therefore, necessary to have a new look at these technological artefacts, given the pedagogical added value that they potentially have, to the extent that if mobile devices are used as instructional tools to build learning, they can be treated as tools to help students perform their tasks and promote their development.

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Besides the scientific content, the playful and interactive dimension of the App promoted the development of important skills: the ability to interact with the environment, collaborative work, autonomy, reading and interpretation skills. One of the fundamental objectives of education is to enable students to observe their natural environment and to develop the skills required to understand and explain both themselves and their environment. This approach stimulates the attention about the world around them and can act as meaningful contexts that are fundamental in stimulating children’s curiosity and involvement in the learning process (Boorman & Rogers, 2000; Milne, 2010; Murcia, 2007). This project provides a learning environment that encourages students to understand the world around them from multiple perspectives. The development of skills necessary to understand and act as citizens is a path that has to be thought of from a very early age. It was the main objective of this project. But we can also see the collaborative endeavour of the creators of the APP. Coming from very different areas of knowledge, they could join in the adventure of understanding how this knowledge could be used for the profit of the students and created the itineraries as interdisciplinary learning environments. The PhD in Sustainability Sciences The second example comes from the PhD in Sustainability Sciences from the University of Lisbon (Galvão et al., 2021). This course is a shared responsibility between natural and social sciences in organisation and teaching, with 47 faculty members of 17 faculties and institutes of the university of Lisbon involved. Focused on the food production and consumption dimensions as leading drivers of sustainability, this PhD is based on Economy, Management and Marketing, Human and Environmental Health, Social practices, Policy, Institutions and Governance, Technologies and Innovation, Ethics and Values. The PhD in Sustainability Sciences fulfils the purpose of interdisciplinarity inherent to the very concept of sustainability sciences (and not sciences for sustainability). Both the organisation of the curricular units and the orientation of the theses are based on the principle of the relationship between natural sciences and social sciences, seeking an open relationship and continuous discussion with the teachers involved. While respecting autonomy and individuality, it is through the sharing of knowledge that barriers are broken and interdisciplinary environments are provided, conducive to the construction of transdisciplinarity. The success of the PhD is based on the innovative structuring pedagogical method of the doctoral course, based on immersive sessions that allow students to be exposed to a multidisciplinary environment, essential to the understanding and discussion of the various aspects associated with the Sciences of Sustainability. The interdisciplinarity achieved is clearly evident in the “project work” developed in groups during the first semester as well as in the proposals for individual scientific projects built during the second semester and duly registered as themes leading to doctoral theses.

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Each curricular unit has two coordinators, respecting the necessary relationship and complementarity between natural sciences and social sciences and supporting the connection between all teachers involved in each discipline. In each session there are three to four teachers from different schools and areas of knowledge in order to create a multidisciplinary learning environment, challenging, dynamic and shared by all. There is no character of an expository class, each session functioning as a place for scientific discussion, to which students’ previous work contribute (reading scientific articles and viewing short videos (ca. 10–15 min) created by the session’s teachers about specific topics and the elaboration of an individual contribution about them, which is submitted on the e-learning platform before the session or developed during the session). Likewise, there is the corresponding previous work by the teachers, appraising and integrating these students’ work in the preparation of the conducting detail of the session with intervention/discussion appropriate to the themes. Student performance is assessed in each session from a continuous assessment perspective. The pedagogical approach in the first semester is project work in teams. Students must solve problems, real problems such as: in a scenario of the need to reduce emissions by 2/3 of today’s levels, students were challenged to work on a multilevel explanation model for the problem and to present a critical proposal for an adaptation program for the primary sector in the specific ecosystem of the Tagus “Lezírias”. The evaluation of the final work of the groups was based on several rubrics created for the assessment of the oral presentation and written work. These rubrics were discussed with students and teachers from the beginning of the course. Examples of some complementary solutions for the common problem: • Create an agricultural and forestry technology hub Companhia das Lezírias with a new model of partnerships with research entities, integration of new emerging companies and spin-off companies, and sharing resources. • Alter the rice irrigation method for intermittent flooding, the culture of Salicornia, and the construction of a Built Humid Zone. • Change conventional practices (agricultural and other). Reflections on possible ways to address these issues ended up defining the guidelines of the work: the systemic approach; the emphasis on effectiveness and efficiency; and the perspective of “change promoters”. • Draw on contributions from the energy field by (a) replacing traditional sources of fossil fuels (such as agricultural diesel with clean sources), (b) introducing energy-saving mechanisms (such as the use of drone groups for monitoring), (c) dispersing chemical agents (such as pesticides) and (d) introducing techniques for the absorption of carbon and methane. • Focus on the adequacy of cattle stock and the management of these animals in the finishing phase by using ideas such as (a) mitigation measures and (b) the promotion of natural regeneration of the plain by the temporary exclusion of grazing as an adaptation easure. The research that was made tried to understand (i) the potentialities and advantages of project work, based on an inquiry perspective, in trying to solve a real and

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multidisciplinary problem; (ii) the difficulties experienced by students with this type of methodology; (iii) the students’ opinion concerning the potentialities and advantages or the drawbacks of project work methodology to their professional and personal development; (iv) the perceived trade-offs of working a limited number of dimensions and therefore relying on the colleagues’ complementary work to reach the wider perspective that contributes to a result. The participants were 14 PhD students with different backgrounds. Data were collected by direct observation of the working sessions, a questionnaire applied to the students at the end of the units, and individual reflections. The questionnaire had several dimensions: • Overall appreciation of the course • Block 1- Immersive multidisciplinary sessions (Methodology; Materials provided; Organization; Autonomous work) • Block 2. Project work (Project Work Methodology; Organization of the project work; team Work) • Learning Assessment (Feedback and Assessment Criteria) • Global Evaluation This paper focuses only on the results of the project work. As is presented in Fig.  1.1, the students had some sentences, and they had to position themselves according to a Likert scale. All of the sentences used are positive in relation to the course, except the 12th to 14th, and the 16th (Fig. 1.1), which point to some difficulties related to this working methodology. Here are some students’ reflections on project work:

Fig. 1.1  General results of the questionnaire. (Galvão et al., 2021)

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C. Galvão Very important to approach theory to practice. Possibility to understand the real and multiple problems that enterprises and institutions face to implement better practices and more sustainable options. Integrative problem-solving. It is very important to bring theory into practice and adapt academic research into practical and concrete solutions, not only on large-scale and high-level decision makers. (Q2) The project was clearly related to real problems. The societal challenges were explicit and covered subjects connected to different disciplines, being able to establish a multidisciplinary vision. The sustainability triangle (economy, society, and environment) was the basis of our work, and we explored and responded in many ways. Through this method, the knowledge produced in this course can contribute to current problems. (Q3)

Advantages of project work: It makes the connection between the academia and the professional world, and this allows the students to feel the real deal. (Q5) Bridge the information transmitted in class with possible professional paths of students and the possibility of creating solutions that can be actually considered within the companies’ context. (Q9)

Constraints of project work From my point of view, doing project work focused on a real problem is such a clever idea that any constraint I felt were the normal constraints that I would feel in a simulation situation. The difference, as it was on a real problem, I had the possibility to feel real constraints. (Q5)

In order to give a more complete idea of students’ perspectives, I present a Narrative which follows some topics: Narrative My experience with this formation has been both challenging and rewarding. It has been a wonderful learning experience and it has helped me broaden my knowledge, or low knowledge, about the subjects of sustainability, resilience, and adaptability. I’ve also enjoyed getting to know all the people with different backgrounds whose perspectives and knowledge have helped me evolve my motivations and solution-seeking path. [Enjoyed the most] For people like me, that also have demanding professional endeavours, it has also been difficult to balance and dedicate the desired time to our studies. [Difficulties] I was surprised to learn all the scientific work into all the areas and how they integrate in the sustainability domains. [Learning] This multidisciplinary program is an adequate and necessary approach to research and reaches different solutions for such complex problems as sustainability. [Research work] What I have learned most from this process is that there is still so much to learn and experiment with regarding this subject. [Learning the most]

Some Conclusions of the Study According to the Zurich Approach to knowledge creation (resulting from the 2000 Zurich Transdisciplinary Conference), this new knowledge is transdisciplinary and emerges contextually in the application in real life, involving science, technology, and society (McGregor, 2014, 2015). Aligned with this approach, there is a need to reverse the prevalent scenario in which the problems addressed by the academic disciplines in higher education stemmed from science and not from the real world.

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Under this scenario, the required change to reach sustainability needs a responsive pedagogical model that is also attentive to the transition to new forms of skill acquisition and knowledge building. The main drivers of learning include building a new body of transdisciplinary academic knowledge in support of the application of science to address real problems using transdisciplinary research and being attentive to the integration of knowledge and innovation with the participation of society and citizens. The collaborative process exists at two levels, between the teachers (in each session, creating interdisciplinary tasks to be solved in class) and between students, solving the tasks (in class and for the development of the project work). The relationship between science and society is always present since the problems are real and underlying the objective is that they intervene as citizens in the contexts in which they work or act, from a perspective of informed citizenship. The COST Action on Citizen Science The third example comes from the citizen science costAction CA 15212- framework in science and technology to promote creativity, scientific literacy and innovation throughout Europe (Cost, 2016). This COST Action included a working group entitled “Develop synergies with education” and, through a dedicated workshop, brought together researchers and practitioners with a range of diverse backgrounds and contexts for interpreting citizen science in relation to education and learning. We did theoretical research and analysed projects to understand state-of-the-art considering citizen science (Roche et al., 2020). As the paper highlights, citizen science is a growing field of research and practice, generating new knowledge and understanding through the collaboration of citizens in scientific research. As the field expands, it is becoming increasingly important to consider its potential to foster education and learning opportunities. Citizen science has the capacity to develop connections between students’ everyday lives and science and can be integrated into education in both formal and informal learning environments (Roche et al., 2020). Logistical tensions tend to arise between citizen science and education due to unavoidable constraints concerning time, space, staff, and other key resources. Some examples are: • competing scientific goals and learning outcomes (the interest of the scientist/ the interest of the learner) • differing underlying ontologies and epistemologies (how each person perceives reality and how knowledge is constructed) • diverging communication strategies (one communication direction/two-way communication) • clashing values around advocacy and activism (defence of something/action)

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Although such challenges can become barriers to the successful integration of citizen science into mainstream education systems, they also serve as signposts for synergies and opportunities. Competing tensions in citizen science can also be considered through three stances in education (Stetsenko, 2008) from acquisition (citizen science processes as concerned with generating pre-existing, fixed, factual knowledge that is gained by individuals primarily through passive input) to participation (positions science and education practices as potentially being affected by other factors – such as location or culture) and transformation (citizen science can become “transformative” when embedded in educational programming). From the perspective of civic society, citizen science should encourage individuals to take an active role in their communities  – operationalising active citizenship (Burls & Recknagel, 2013). Citizen science projects that focus on environmental activism and climate change empower people to take responsibility for the future of their environments (Baptista et  al., 2018; Dawson et  al., 2020). Projects tend to adopt either a two-way approach that emphasises participatory dialogue (Haywood & Besley, 2013) or a one-way approach that focuses on outreach and dissemination. Two-way communication between citizens and scientists within projects leads to the sharing of ideas, information, and knowledge, while one-way dissemination to a wider audience can involve the communication of results, funding specific public relations obligations, or participant recruitment (Tulloch et  al., 2013; Groulx et al., 2017). Citizen science would evolve into a collaborative, co-creative approach. This transformative stance presents an ideal common ground for both education and citizen science, resolving potential onto-epistemological tensions and generating cooperation. While the two-way, participatory approach is more time-consuming and can put additional pressure on project resources, it is more likely to foster collaborative work, relationship building, and learning (Mercer & Littleton, 2007). Citizen science practitioners seeking links with schools may find that tapping into more transformative models of learner engagement is a starting point for enhanced participation. Citizen science also offers a route by which the tenets of responsible research and innovation (Owen et al., 2012) may be fulfilled, particularly by facilitating lesser-­ heard communities to have their voices heard in relation to scientific policymaking and governance. The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the acute need for public trust to be strengthened, and citizen science might offer a more pressing model for science in a post-pandemic world (Provenzi & Barello, 2020). Considering some citizen science projects, some of them offer good infrastructure, but others cannot do it. So, for the second situation, participation is more restricted. Co-constructed citizen science projects, where students are actively involved in the scientific process, are resource intensive for scientists, students, and teachers but are more likely to achieve the scientific and educational goals of the project. As an example, students can wonder about a problem in their community, discuss their ideas with others online, including scientists and experts, help develop protocols to collect data, investigate and work with the data and finally, produce an action plan to use their findings to make real change. (E.g., WeatherBlur Project, 1992–2022).

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Citizen science is not merely a method of involving the public in scientific research but is also a way of empowering citizens to take ownership of their own science education and learning. Key emerging recommendations are, for instance, to align educational learning outcomes with citizen science project goals at the planning stage of the project using co-creation approaches to ensure issues of accessibility and inclusivity are paramount throughout the design and implementation of every project. Only then can citizen science realise its true potential to empower citizens to take ownership of their own science education and learning.

1.1.3 What Can We Conclude from These Three Examples? These three examples show the importance of involving students in finding solutions and giving them the opportunity to analyse problems from different perspectives. This is possible when schools and teachers create educational environments with complementary and diversified knowledge. This is the best way to develop in students the confidence to act socially in a responsible manner. And this is the way for (i) the increased ability to analyse situations non-linearly; (ii) the enhancement of diverse information, stimulating the ability to incorporate it into the resolution of complex problems; (iii) the increase in scepticism, allowing for scientific and informed argumentation; (iv) the valorisation of teamwork by realising that the resolution for a problem is thus greater than the sum of each perspective, and (v) the appreciation of knowledge globally, valuing the importance of non-corset knowledge, on a path to transdisciplinary knowledge. Common to the three examples are the concepts of Collaboration, between teachers and between students, and Interdisciplinarity, building knowledge from different areas. Maybe with this kind of learning environment, we can contribute to more conscious persons, aware of the world’s problems and intervening as informed citizens. The result of the research in the three examples relates to other studies that reinforce the importance of the use of problem-solving situations to promote meaningful learning that reduces the barrier between school and real life through educational practices anchored in success factors and metacognitive strategies. It is, above all, different ways of developing students’ thinking within the framework of the imperatives and emergencies of the twenty-first century (Contente & Galvão, 2022). Learning situations based on real problems in which science and society are understood as partners, or citizen science projects, where the co-construction of projects from schools and scientists are the rule, encourage individuals to take an active role in their communities, operationalising active citizenship (Burls & Recknagel, 2013; Kythreotis et al., 2019). Disciplinary science contributes to understanding the function of the various pieces that make up our world but lacks the understanding of how these parts relate to each other and the world (Pellegrino & Hilton, 2012), and this is essential to built citizenship (European Commission, 2015). The need for new knowledge results

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from the conscious fusion of different perspectives and an understanding of new information from science and other areas. And this is only possible with collaboration and a sense of responsibility in solving problems at school and later in society. The nature of a person is not given by his internal physical conformation but by the networks of personal and family interactions in which he exists (Rovelli, 2019). In this sense, as science educators, it is our responsibility to show our students the beauty of explaining the complex world in which we live through connections and reciprocal information networks. Opening the frontiers of the areas of knowledge to build new knowledge is the best way to face the future.

References Baptista, M., Reis, P., & Andrade, V. (2018). Let’s save the bees! An environmental activism initiative in elementary school. Visions for Sustainability, 9, 41–48. https://doi.org/10.1313 5/2384-­8677/2772 Boorman, P., & Rogers, M. (2000). Science through everyday activities. In M. Boo (Ed.), Laying the foundations in the early years (pp. 39–47). Association for Science Education. Burls, K., & Recknagel, G. (2013). Approaches to active citizens learning: A review of policy and practice 2010–2013. Lincoln. Contente, J., & Galvão, C. (2022). STEM education and problem-solving in space science: A case study with CanSat. Education in Science, 12(4), 251. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci12040251 COST. (2016). COST Action CA15212: Citizen science to promote creativity, scientific literacy, and innovation throughout Europe. Available Online at: https://www.cs-­eu.net. Accessed 10 July 2021. Dawson, T., Hambly, J., Kelley, A., Lees, W., & Miller, S. (2020). Coastal heritage, global climate change, public engagement, and citizen science. Proceedings. National Academy of Sciences. United States of America, 117, 8280–8286. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1912246117 European Commission. (2007). Science education now: A renewed pedagogy for the future of Europe. European Commission. European Commission. (2015). Science education for responsible citizenship, Report of the Expert Group on Science Education, European Union, Luxembourg, available at: http://ec.europa.eu/ research/swafs/pdf/pub_science_education/KI-­NA-­26-­893-­EN-­N.pdf Faria, C., Guilherme, E., Pintassilgo, J., Morgado, M. J., Pinho, A. S., Baptista, M., Chagas, I., & Galvão, C. (2019). The Portuguese Maritime Discoveries: The exploration of the history of a city with an App as an educational resource. Digital Education Review, 36, http://greav. ub.edu/der/ Fiore, S. M., Graesser, A., Greiff, S., Griffin, P., Gong, B., Kyllonen, P., . . . Rothman, R. (2017). Collaborative problem solving: Considerations for the National Assessment of Educational Progress. National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). Galvão, C., Faria, C., Viegas, W., Branco, A., & Goulão, L. (2021). Inquiry in higher education for sustainable development: Crossing disciplinary knowledge boundaries. International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, 22(2), 291–307. https://doi.org/10.1108/ IJSHE-­02-­2020-­0068 Groulx, M., Brisbois, M. C., Lemieux, C. J., Winegardner, A., & Fishback, L. (2017). A role for nature-based citizen science in promoting individual and collective climate change action? A systematic review of learning outcomes. Science Communication, 39, 45–76. https://doi. org/10.1177/1075547016688324 Haywood, B.  K., & Besley, J.  C. (2013). Education, outreach, and inclusive engagement: Towards integrated indicators of successful program outcomes in participatory science. Public Understanding of Science, 23, 92–106. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963662513494560

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Johnson, D. W., Johnson, R. T., Roseth, C., & Shin, T. (2014). The relationship between motivation and achievement in interdependent situations. Journal of Applied Social Psychology. https:// doi.org/10.1111/jasp.12280 Klein, P. (2006). The challenges of scientific literacy: From the viewpoint of second-generation cognitive science. International Journal of Science Education, 28(2), 143–178. Kythreotis, A.  P., Mantyka-Pringle, C., Mercer, T.  G., Whitmarsh, L.  E., Corner, A., Paavola, J., et  al. (2019). Citizen social science for more integrative and effective climate action: A science-­policy perspective. Frontiers in Environmental Science, 7, 10. https://doi.org/10.3389/ fenvs.2019.00010 McGregor, S. L. T. (2014). TDMeme: A transdisciplinary meme. Integral Leadership Review, 14(2). McGregor, S.  L. T. (2015). Transdisciplinary knowledge creation. In P.  T. Gibbs (Ed.), Transdisciplinary professional learning and practice (pp. 9–24). Springer. Mercer, N., & Littleton, K. (2007). Dialogue and the development of Children’s thinking: A sociocultural approach. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203946657 Milne, I. (2010). A sense of wonder, arising from aesthetic experiences, should be the starting point for inquiry in primary science. Science Education International, 21(2), 102–115. Mitcham, C., & Frodeman, R. (2003). Extending science, technology, and society interdisciplinarity. Science, Technology, and Human Values, 28(1), 180–183. Murcia, K. (2007). Science for the 21st century: Teaching for scientific literacy in the primary classroom. Teaching Science, 53(2), 16–19. Natriello, G. (2007). Imagining, seeking, inventing: The future of learning and the emerging discovery networks. Learning Inquiry, 1(1), 7–18. Owen, R., Macnaghten, P., & Stilgoe, J. (2012). Responsible research and innovation: From science in society to science for society, with society. Science and Public Policy, 39, 751–760. https://doi.org/10.1093/scipol/scs093 Pellegrino, J. W., & Hilton, M. (Eds.). (2012). Education for life and work: Developing transferable knowledge and skills in the 21st century. National Academic Press. Provenzi, L., & Barello, S. (2020). The science of the future: Establishing a citizen-scientist collaborative agenda after Covid-19. Frontiers in Public Health, 8, 282. https://doi.org/10.3389/ fpubh.2020.00282 Roche, J., Bell, L., Galvão, C., Golumbic, Y. N., Kloetzer, L., Knoben, N., Laakso, M., Lorke, J., Mannion, G., Massetti, L., Mauchline, A., Pata, K., Ruck, A., Taraba, P., & Winter, S. (2020). Citizen science, education, and learning: Challenges and opportunities. Frontiers in Sociology, 5(613814), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.3389/fsoc.2020.613814 Rovelli, C. (2019). A realidade não é o que parece. A natureza alucinante do universo [Nature is not what it seems. The mind-blowing nature of the universe]. Contraponto. Stetsenko, A. (2008). From relational ontology to transformative activist stance on development and learning: Expanding Vygotsky’s (CHAT) project. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 3, 471–491. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11422-­008-­9111-­3 Tulloch, A. I., Possingham, H. P., Joseph, L. N., Szabo, J., & Martin, T. G. (2013). Realising the full potential of citizen science monitoring programs. Biological Conservation, 165, 128–138. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2013.05.025 UNESCO. (2015). Rethinking education. Towards a common global good? United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. WeatherBlur Project. (1992–2022). Maine mathematics and science alliance. https://mmsa.org/ projects/weatherblur/. Accessed 21 Feb 2022.

Chapter 2

Learning and Becoming in Movement: A Conceptual Lens to Research in Science Education, Committed to Fostering Scientific Citizenship in an Uncertain World Jrène Rahm

2.1 Introduction A mobility lens offers a focus on embodied temporalities of forms of learning and identity while pushing back on representationalism (Leander & Hollett, 2017). A mobility lens unsettles static, linear, and end-point-driven visions of learning and becoming in science. Mobility also challenges a container view of learning and becoming or a vision of learning and becoming as resulting from movement, and instead, calls for an understanding of its emergence in movement (Leander & Hollett, 2017). In doing so, mobility helps us rethink what counts as science learning but also what we mean by learning and identity in science. It pushes us to engage with the ideologies that underpin how we as researchers conceptualise and study learning and becoming and how we envision science (Takeuchi et al., 2020). It pushes us to overcome the practice of narrowly defined, colourblind, and assimilationist research and instead calls for deep engagement with “the cultural heterogeneity in students’ work” and the systemic barriers students from non-dominant groups experience daily in science education. For too long, ideologies about learners, but also about what science is and for whom have been absent from conversations and studies of learning and becoming in science. In this chapter, I make a case for a mobility lens to the study of learning and becoming. I unpack the meaning of learning and becoming in science and what its study in movement implies, and what such a stance helps to centre in discussions of science education. I engage the reader with differences and multiplicity in light of what science is and in terms of forms of

J. Rahm (*) Université de Montréal, Montreal, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 G. S. Carvalho et al. (eds.), Fostering Scientific Citizenship in an Uncertain World, Contributions from Science Education Research 13, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32225-9_2

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learning and becoming in science by celebrating differences as they underline human creativity (Escobar, 2018). To illustrate what a mobility lens offers in light of current conversations about learning and identity in the field of science education, I present two case studies and a space-time reading of youths’ ongoing learning and becoming in science. The two stories speak to science as both context and object of study. The first case study begins in an urban afterschool science program in Canada and then follows a subset of young women of colour over time, centring forms of engagement with science marked by their personal histories but also local conscientious practice. Through the analysis of two key moments from a large data set, I present one among many possible stories of lifelong learning and becoming in science. In the second study, I attend to mobilities among epistemologies and axiologies at the heart of the revitalisation of land-based environmental stewardship practices deeply grounded in and emergent from Inuit knowledge systems and exemplifying an ontology of science as lived. Through the story of one youth participant, I show how learning and becoming are entangled in a forth and back movement and tension between Western knowledge systems and Indigenous knowledge systems. The goal to accumulate knowledge and materials in ways essential to learning and becoming somebody within a merit-based educational system drives the former, while the goal to develop the skills needed to thrive in a challenging environment in life-sustaining ways and thereby contribute to community wellness drives the latter. In light of the two examples, I discuss in the conclusion how a mobility lens provides us with new tools to reimagine the joint design of innovative science learning and teacher education deeply committed to equity and social justice. Note that I use the terms identity and becoming interchangeably in this text to underline human agency in ways Vygotsky talked about and that Holland et al.’s (1998) work further built on, emphasising that our creative ability and agency “both enable the creation of new worlds and new identities and make us appreciate how figured (objectified) identities become important tools with which individuals and groups seek to manage one another and their own behaviour” (p.  281). As such, identity and agency in cultural worlds also always imply social and political work, “the space of authoring, of self-fashioning, remains a social and cultural space” and often is “a contested space, a space of struggle” (p.  282). Identity understood as becoming, underlines that it is an ever-ongoing process constituted by histories in person and future aspirations. That conceptual grounding challenges current propositions in some of the literature in science education that portrays identity in science as separate from or without reference to learning when the two are actually entangled. The chapter also distances itself from research that understands science identity as a commodity with accrued capital in society. The ESERA 2021 plenary summarised in this chapter was prepared as I was confined in place given the COVID-19 pandemic. Confinement, which started locally in March 2020, resulting in school closures, strict measures and classroom bubbles in schools during the academic school year from the fall of 2020 to the spring of 2021, next to online teaching at the University, made evident new questions about learning and becoming in movement, as the movement itself was altered

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in unanticipated ways. As I am writing this chapter, I am also located in space-time in yet different ways, on unceded Indigenous lands. As an educator and researcher, I am engaged with that colonial history through reflections about the past while working with others on the resurgence of Indigenous communities and cultures through respectful relationships and as an ally. Finally, the rise of global Anti-­ Racism Social Movements, Black Lives Matter, and the calls for Indigenous Sovereignty and action in light of social justice are further entangled with the stories of science education I share in this chapter. The current situation certainly underlines in yet other ways the social and political and has shaped my own positioning and vision of research in important ways.

2.2 Social Practice Theory, Intersectionality, and Mobility Mobility as a conceptual tool draws on different disciplinary contexts and fields, such as cultural theories of learning and development, the learning sciences, and the anthropology of education. Accordingly, learning and identity are understood as taking shape through/in forms of participation and emerge from “relations between history in person and enduring struggles” that are worked out and “realised in contentious local practice” (Holland & Lave, 2000, p. 6). History in person refers to a constellation of relations – social, cultural and historical that a person brings to a situation, while “a second principal constellation of relations” purports to the contentious local practice and broader, more enduring (historical, processual, and open-­ ended) struggles” (p. 6). Taken together, that conceptual grounding makes evident that neither learning nor identity is fixed, that neither of the two is a property of an individual or the practice alone, but instead, form a dynamic dialectic marked by  struggles and tensions, and  multiple layers of socially given constellations of learning and selves. Essentially, “selves are socially constructed through the mediation of powerful discourses and their artefacts” (Holland et al., 1998, p. 26), marked by struggles and power, making the study of learning and identity in science naturally political. The conceptualisation of identity as emergent from and entangled with practice led Carlone and Johnson (2007) to propose a model of identity work in science in light of three interrelated dimensions, namely competence (i.e., knowing science), performance (e.g., doing science), and recognition (e.g. identifying with and seeing oneself as a science person, while also being recognised by others/experts as such given knowing, doing and being). That model has been used extensively, centring students’ identification as a science person given recognition by others which has important implications for how that person experiences learning opportunities in science and, as a consequence, either impedes or enables students’ abilities to persist in science. Bringing to it an intersectional lens, Johnson (2020) makes evident how the same environment and setting can be experienced quite differently by different people given particular intersections, which then affect how a person is perceived and the power the person has access to. Expanding upon Collins (2009)

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domains-of-power framework, Johnson (2020) shows how power works through the interpersonal domain (i.e., how power is worked out and constitutes interactions in situ), the cultural domain (i.e., what is valued locally, and how it is conveyed to students), the structural domain (i.e., how power plays out structurally by giving only some students access to engaging science curriculum), and the disciplining domain (e.g., microaggressions that seem normative in physics). Other researchers use lenses from critical race theory to get at intersectionality and recognition. For instance, Wade-Jaimes and Schwartz (2019) attend to macro-level discourses about who can become somebody in science which they understand as having implications in practice in how being an insider to science is performed to ensure recognition. The latter is further influenced by micro-discourses about the manner students’ bodies and actions in the classroom are recognised by the teacher and peers. Building on feminist theory and gender performativity and intelligibility, Godec (2018) highlights the manner working-class girls of colour author selves in science. She underlines the discursive strategy of “rendering gender invisible”, which enabled some of the girls of colour to make their participation in science intelligible. Godec (2018) shows in what ways such actions further reinforce stereotypes and essentially perpetuate “a cultural discourse of desirability in science” (p. 11). While far from exhaustive, these studies make evident how researchers have tackled the notion of science identity as a landscape of becoming, attending to the “infinite ways of becoming a science person and rethinking recognition and emotions through an intersectional lens” (Avraamidou, 2020, p. 325). Yet, as further underlined by other researchers and pertinent to this chapter, identity work is also “enabled or constrained by the spatial and temporal locality of the setting” (Gonsalves, 2020, p. 354). To build still further on these conceptual tools and capture learning and becoming in movement in science, Ingold’s (2011) notion of “wayfaring” struck me as particularly useful. It helped me unpack the still too often taken-for-granted linear path and pipeline model of becoming somebody in science. It also helped me re-­ envision leaks in  the pipeline model in different ways. Leaks are typically problematised yet rarely understood as forms of resistance, innovation, multiplicity, and diversity in pathways to be celebrated, as they are expressions of genuine human creativity (Escobar, 2018). They indicate resistance to ongoing narrowly defined elite science and colonial worldviews of science and science pathways. Epistemic decolonisation, according to Escobar (2018), implies “critically assessing ‘which concepts are we moved by and how we move those concepts and theories that are presupposed in the decisions that affect our day in and day out’” (p. 224). In many ways, a mobile lens that centres the idea of multiplicity and diversity of learning and becoming in science understood as a lifelong journey offers a means to move beyond simplistic modern patriarchal systems and dualisms. Ingold (2011) contends that what keeps us going is “a good measure of creative improvisation”, and hence, it is “in their movement along a way of life – that people grow into knowledge” (p. 162, italics in original). As people forge a path, they leave a trail. And it is these left-­ behind trails that are intertwined to form knots, which make evident multiple “lines of wayfaring” (p. 149). The caught-up lines in knots, leading to further trails and

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new knots, or denser knots, is what Ingold called a “meshwork.” And part of this “entire meshwork of intertwined trails along which people carry on their lives” is about learning and becoming in science. Hence, we may ask, “how are lives, persons, and practices produced [emphasis in original] in ongoing everyday practices” (Lave, 2012, p.  157)? According to Holland et  al. (1998), it implies a dynamic, ongoing process in that “one’s history-in-person is the sediment from past experiences upon which one improvises, using the cultural resources available, in response to the subject positions afforded one in the present” (p. 18). Yet, one is never free to develop the kinds of identities or subjectivities one desires. Instead, such identity work – or the authoring of oneself – is tied to a person’s figured worlds and positional identities. Figured worlds or “frames of meaning in which interpretations of human actions are negotiated” (Holland et al., 1998, p. 271) are abstractions formed in relation to real-world experiences. Figured worlds give meaning to people’s activities but simultaneously are continuously remade and expanded upon. Positionality or “social positioning has to do with entitlement to social and material resources” (p. 271). Positional identities are about “one’s sense of social place and entitlement” (p. 125) which can become dispositions, however, over time. Ascribed subject positions may be simply taken on without questioning, whereas other moments may entail the rejection, opposition and remaking of identities. That contested space leaves room for agency and transformation and “making worlds” (p.  272). New figured worlds may come about through resistance but also improvisation. Figured worlds, positionalities, authoring of selves and new worlds are all processes entangled with trails in the making that then form knots and constitute the meshwork. Hence, Ingold (2011) pushes us to think of learning and becoming in science as well as the navigating of multiple epistemologies of science as relational and calls for the need to attend to the nonlinear and affectively charged work of wayfaring which he describes as “our most fundamental mode of being in the world” (p. 152).

2.3 Methods to Capture Learning and Becoming in Movement To capture learning and becoming in movement and be attentive to plurality in light of wayfaring is methodologically challenging as it can no longer be pursued through a linear and traceable method. Attending to the entanglement through a complex bricolage of multiple data sets often also implies a focus on the mundane, which then becomes central when looked at from multiple stances in and over time and space (Taylor, 2016). The two cases in this chapter were crafted in this manner with data from two independent collaborative research projects that stretched out in time and implied the building of relationships with community organisations and its key stakeholders (Rahm et al., 2021; Tagalik et al., 2022).

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Case 1. Wayfaring Within and Beyond a Girls’ Afterschool Science Program The first case draws from a larger data set and study conducted from 2009 to 2016 (Rahm et al., 2021). We focus on two moments that emerged as we worked with a group of six young women of Caribbean and South Asian ethnic backgrounds from an afterschool program in which we met initially. First moment. We begin by centring three pictures the young women captured to introduce the afterschool science program in a documentary we were working on together in 2013. The three pictures (see Fig. 2.1) offer a rich story of the kind of scientific knowledge, doing of science, and science identity program activities supported. While the young women talked about wanting to present the program as scientific, they also aimed to centre the notion that “science is fun” and engaging. One picture shows flasks, beakers, and test tubes, another one is a capture of one participant transferring coloured liquid into a flask, and a third picture depicts another participant writing scientific equations on a blackboard. The three pictures make evident a narrowly defined yet popular vision of science and doing science in ways many movies do. The work that went into these depictions by the young women positions them as science savvy. The movie we co-constructed can be read as a figuring of science and selves in science entangled with other forms of becoming program features supported (e.g., learning many skills through homework help, being in a safe place after school, etc.). The figured world and becoming, and essentially trails in the making, formed a complex entanglement, resulting in knots and a meshwork which was refined through further conversations, the actual video product, and the sharing of it at an upcoming scientific meeting. It also entailed a fourth and back movement in time, as the young women recalled their forms of program participation from elementary school onward and involvement in diverse projects (e.g., science fair projects, scientific newsletter activity, field trips to STEM institutions and meetings with female role models). That video was then shared in a paper set at an International STEM Conference, entitled “Youth Researchers Erasing Disparities in STEM Opportunities” and included five different youth groups, four from the USA and this one from Canada. Each youth group shared program features through a short video clip and then discussed themes introduced by the session organisers, and also responded to questions. The goal of that session was to centre youth voices and re-envision youths’ engagement with science and science itself. Once we situate the three pictures above within that context, many layers of figuring of science and selves in science

Fig. 2.1  Photographs captured for the video production

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become apparent. All youth participants in that session had multiple experiences of being positioned as outsiders of science given their histories, ethnicity, race, religion, gender and diverse cultural backgrounds, which in most cases were not recognised as assets. Naming and sharing struggles, yet also dreams and future aspirations in science while meeting other youth from across North America that articulated lived challenges in such similar ways was empowering and inspiring to the young women we worked with, leading to rich informal conversations after that session. Interestingly, the youth groups participated in the session virtually, which at the time needed to be argued in convincing ways to have the session accepted at the meeting, as it was pre-pandemic. Lack of funding would have cut short youth participation in the meeting. These points hint at persistent structural barriers to the inclusion of diverse youths’ voices in science education research and conferencing. Second moment. In 2016, we pursued another co-creation project with the same six young women of colour, this time mapping learning pathways. Narratives of their learning pathways captured on video were then shared by the author at an international meeting and session focusing on STEM pathways (see Fig. 2.2). That project was an opportunity to make meaning of stories so far. Alana brought up the issue of race, noting, “I am tired of being the only black girl” in the BA in psychology. We ended up talking about how hard she was working to ensure high grades and make it into a graduate program. Not having gone to a private school prior to University set her at a disadvantage, making her stay up at night to catch up on content that was not taught to her. Alana’s ongoing wayfaring implied forth and back movements in and through the University and the afterschool program where she currently works as an instructor. All trails were marked in complex ways by educational opportunities for girls, poverty, race, histories of immigration and transnational travel. Their entanglement resulted in knots and a complex meshwork unique to each of the young women (e.g., Achyntia’s engagement in her brothers’ traditional wedding ceremony in Bangladesh, leading to a six-month absence and return to her home country). The joint-creation project also led to empowering moments and safe spaces to figure out the entanglement of science and self in science with the young women’s struggles as first-generation college-bound students.

Fig. 2.2  Example of a learning pathway (right), working on posters together (left)

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For instance, Mohini argued that her mother had done all the hard work of wayfaring before her trying to get an education, making it now easier for her. Her grandparents were poor fishermen in Bangladesh but then encouraged her mother to get an education. Eventually, her mother left Bangladesh with her husband, first living in Switzerland, where Mohini was born, and then moving on to Canada with Mohini and her younger brother after a separation. Her mother, who had a good education and other family members who also had left for North America and currently worked as doctors became role models for Mohini. They were support figures and brokers, ensuring she would persist in her career path in medicine at a first-class University despite the high academic expectations in that field. In contrast, Achyntia struggled, feeling a disconnect between her home culture and expectations of her as a Muslim woman with strong cultural roots in Bangladesh. She was eager to pursue a degree either in engineering or medicine but struggled in light of family expectations for marriage by the age of 24. Alana and Mohini spent much time encouraging her. Eventually, she settled on a three-year University degree in nursing, which she successfully completed together with another friend from this group. Case 2: Learning and Becoming Through Engagement in Inuit-Led Community Programming and Environmental Stewardship This second case study was crafted from qualitative data collected in the context of a larger five-year collaborative research project that led to the joint documentation of Inuit-led community programming within three communities in Inuit Nunangat (the land where Inuit live). In this chapter, I focus on the learning pathway of one young adult who participated in some activities we documented in that larger study as he worked at the time with the Aqqiumavvik Society (AS) in Arviat, a fly-in only community in Nunavut. The story of Kevin builds off two interviews that were conducted in his community in 2014 and 2016, different program information retrieved from the internet and news briefs from 2010 to 2019, and other information gathered from interviews of members of some of the community organisations and programs he engaged with. We focus on a non-exhaustive list of community activities to tell one story among others that could be told, using a pseudonym, to protect Kevin’s identity. Kevin was engaged in multiple Inuit-led and community-grounded activities over time, as captured in Fig. 2.3, that constitute his lifelong learning and becoming. A short movie clip on the ISUMA TV channel website (a local Inuit-owned production company) from 2012 shows Kevin talking on behalf of Global Dignity Day as a National Role Model. At the time, Kevin was involved in the Nanisiniq Arviat History Project and was also a member of the Arviat Youth Media Team, working on several Arviat community-based research projects (see Fig. 2.3). Kevin is shown walking the shorelines of his community while sharing the following: On October 17th more than 350 thousand students will show what dignity means to them. This special day is dedicated to the idea that we all have fundamental human rights to live a dignified life. Dignity means respecting every human being, celebrating their potential, and working together to build stronger, healthier communities. On October 17th, I encourage you to join me and students from across Canada and around the world to participate in Canada’s second global dignity day. Share your personal story with other students and learn

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Fig. 2.3  Timeline of some of the learning opportunities Kevin engaged in overtime more about how it can build a stronger future. Because the more dignity we have, the brighter our world will be.

The caption of the film introduces Kevin as “fluent in Inuktitut and English” and summarises some of Kevin’s involvement in community-driven projects as follows: Kevin presented traditional knowledge and Inuit perspectives on climate change at international conferences such as International Polar Year in Montreal and COP17  in Durban, South Africa. In his travels, he has shared the experiences of disabled residents of Phelisanong in Lesotho and rallied with them in drawing attention to the ravages of HIV/ AIDS in South Africa. With confidence, pride and with the knowledge gained through his participation in the Nanisiniq project and the Canadian Rangers, Kevin’s commitment to dignity is helping other Inuit youth take pride in who they are: their history, culture and what they have to offer to the world. [Caption, Video Clip 2012, Isuma TV]

Kevin has a long history of community involvement and activism on behalf of Inuit culture and youth. He participated for 3 years in the Junior Canadian Rangers, a program open to youth, offering them opportunities to engage in land trips and develop locally adapted survival skills. Through his involvement with the Arviat Film Society, which was launched in 2010, he gathered the media skills needed to tell stories important to him. As the program directors noted in an interview in 2016, “video making is all about storytelling.” Youth lead the projects while the adults are there “to make sure the youth have everything they need.” Kevin also participated in the Nanisiniq Arviat History Project: The Nanisiniq Arviat History Project is a joint venture involving youth and Elders in the Inuit community of Arviat, located on the southwest side of Hudson Bay, Nunavut. For decades, Inuit Elders have expressed concern about the knowledge Inuit youth have of their own social history and culture. This project brings together Inuit youth and Elders in an exploration of their history and culture from an Inuit point of view… Elders and youth are

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J. Rahm also filming their experience and interviewing not only Elders in their community but also Qallunaat [Inuit word for white people] who came north in the late 1950s and 1960s, a period of phenomenal change among Inuit from Arviat. [Description from Project Website]

Participation in the project reinforced Kevin’s passion for history and interest in talking with Elders. Given his fluency in Inuktitut, he is at ease with Elders. That project also allowed him to explore issues of climate change with Elders and eventually speak on behalf of the Inuit at the Climate Change Summit in Durban, South Africa, in 2011. When reflecting on that project, Kevin noted: So, with the history project… we did interviews, we talked with Elders, we did research about... relocations, starvations and looked at Arviat’s history...we also talked about climate change with Elders. We talked about the effects of climate change, and we did presentations while we travelled. We presented what we researched. So, with the Nanisiniq Project, I pretty much learned how to overcome my fears of being in front of cameras, or talking to Elders, talking to you. So, the history project helped me to really express myself and to also share my thoughts with other youth. It gave me opportunities to...not get shy around people to present in front of people, and it helped me to understand more about life and what’s more to life. It  has helped me to understand there is more outside of Arviat. [Kevin, Interview 2014 & 2016]

In 2014, Kevin was in the process of getting his high school diploma. He was given the opportunity to finalise his missing credits in English and Science by working on a community environmental monitoring project that was mediated by AS.  Kevin was working closely together with a researcher whose help was solicited by AS to oversee youth training tied up with food security-driven community projects at the time. One project entailed the set-up of a local greenhouse, and the other, a water monitoring/fish necropsy project and identification of potential health hazards in  local foods. Kevin also conducted interviews with Elders, asking them about snow and the weather. When on the land with the scientist, he learned how to “take some samples form caribous, fish and we did like hands-on, and did our own little thing, when we’d go out hunting, we try to observe and learn by doing things, by actually doing it.” In the community and mediated by AS, youth learned how to systematically assess the quality of fish and learn about the steps of a necropsy (see Fig. 2.4). Kevin talked a lot about the challenges but also opportunities he experienced growing up within these two cultures – Inuit and Western. As he noted, in school, they never learned about his culture, the relocation of Inuit not so long ago to his community, and other components of the local history that he gathered through

Fig. 2.4  Necropsy project

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participation in some of the projects described above and listed in Fig. 2.3. These opportunities were offered outside of formal schooling. He talked about learning all the time when outside of school: Inuit are very adaptable and constantly observing. We do our things by observing; we do our things with our eyes and our mind with our hands. And you just cannot do that in school. When you ask your principal if you can go outside to observe the weather, they will tell you that you cannot go outside. You have to stay. Can I go to the window and observe? You got two minutes to observe, and you sit right back afterwards; that will be the problem. Elders were always moving, taught to observe, and taught to be attentive to their environment. I lived and observed from my grandparents what they’ve learned, how they survived, how they went through starvation and their hardships throughout their lives 60 years [ago] from now, and I’m just only 24, and throughout my 24 years of life, I’ve been in two cultures and learned two things from them. I’ve learned how to live my life from my grandparents. I’ve learned respect from my grandparents. I’ve learned a lot of things from my grandparents. And another thing, I’ve learned a lot from school. I’ve learned how to speak English at school. I’ve learned how to write at school, and school taught me how to look at myself and better myself, so that’s what I see in the two perspectives of learning and observing from schools or Elders, and when I mean my Elders, I’m talking about my grandparents, and there’s also a lot of Elders in the community who know all these traditional values of Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit. [Kevin, Interview, 2014]

2.4 Discussion: Implications of Case Studies for Science Education By putting to work the conceptual lens of learning and becoming in movement, the two case studies call for a broadening of both the timeframe and spatial landscape of its study. The cases are genuinely rich for understanding wayfaring, knotting and meshworking and make evident the manner learning and becoming in science is entangled with so many other trails of life and undermined in so many cases by structural and political ideologies that we as researchers are still grappling with. Taken together, the moments we shared in each case study helped us “unpack interlocking frames of oppression” (Gonsalves, 2020, p.  6) yet also centre embodied pathways and ethical trails marked by dignity (Vossoughi et al., 2020). The two case studies expand the image of the learner next to the goal of learning and becoming in movement, centring the sociopolitical (Philip & Sengupta, 2021). Cases 1 and 2 showcase complex navigations and trails making it evident that “lives are not led inside places but through, around, to and from them” (Ingold, 2011, p. 63). Case 1 makes evident how learning and becoming in science by the young women of colour implied a forth and back movement in time and is grounded in and emergent from relations that were nurtured through long-term participation in the afterschool program through the affinity space that emerged in light of the co-creation projects, and through family relations locally and transnationally. The threading of trails the young women engaged in over time imply complex forth and

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back movements and figurings of worlds of science and self in science in light of being positioned yet also in terms of new emergent imaginaries. Science educators and researchers would do well to attend more thoroughly to that kind of meshworking. Becoming a science person is not simply about science but entangled with becoming a person, the latter being marked by intersectionality. Case 2 makes evident not only the entanglements of multiple practices and projects that then constituted Kevin’s figuring of himself as a science person and person at large but took us a step further as we navigate with Kevin’s multiple worldviews of science and ways of learning and becoming simultaneously. The case makes evident that his learning and becoming is entangled in a complex meshwork of trails,  deeply marked by ongoing colonisation and an educational system and vision of science that values Western ways of knowing while silencing his own rich history in person and cultural knowledge system. As such, his case also makes evident the entanglement of language and culture with science, as “indigenous languages are not solely a means of communication but are repositories of the histories, values, and understandings of particular nations and deeply rooted in specific geographical locations” (Wiseman & Kreuger, 2019, p. 292). There is no one-to-one translation of science from English into Inuktitut or the other way around. It led some educators to suggest that without access to education in Inuktitut, most youth will neither be able to be immersed in cultural concepts nor grasp them epistemologically and ontologically, leaving them without access to Inuit scientific knowledge. Kevin’s ongoing engagement in community projects also makes evident his interest in identity-affirming practices supportive of his authentic self, whereas the school curriculum and science, in particular, did not offer him opportunities to develop a sense of pride in being Inuk, being a fluent Inuktitut speaker or as somebody living in respectful relations with Elders and other community members and the land, aiming to contribute to the common good. As noted by Jeff Contassel (2020), an educator and teacher from the Cherokee Nation, these projects that emerge in and through the community can be read as “everyday acts of resurgence” that “tend to be invisible and unacknowledged”, yet, “they are often critical sites of resistance and transformative change” (p. 353). He continues by noting that “restorying is about reclaiming and renewing our rebellious dignity as Indigenous peoples and nations and about activating land-based resurgence” (p. 352). It seems clear that Kevin’s mobility attests to such resistance and resurgence work. Furthermore, Robin Kimmerer (2013), known as a Citizen Potawatomi Nation scientist, states, “our relationships with land cannot heal until we hear its stories” (p. 9). Kevin was in the process, through his relations with his mother and grandparents, and participation in the multiple community-led projects to “hear” those stories, which then helped him understand the importance of centring Indigenous “concerns and worldviews” (Smith, 2012, p.  41) through his own actions and contributions to community research. Kevin’s “everyday actions” make evident that he was “politically aware and acting to disrupt colonial landscapes” (p. 354). Kevin’s personally developed expertise on climate change led him to become an internationally lauded climate expert, while the local school system did not recognise that expertise and had no

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means to bring that expertise forward in the confines of its very limited curriculum. The two cases essentially resettle the science in science education, calling for a decolonial lens of what counts as science while refusing erasure. The two cases do so by pushing boundaries of what counts as engagement in and with science and who can be a science person, asking us to consider and imagine science as a more critical and emancipatory transdisciplinary (Takeuchi et al., 2020). In closing, I argue that the study of learning and becoming in movement is particularly pertinent and promising in our current challenging times as such a framing engages deeply with the entanglement of the political, natural and social worlds (Bang, 2020; Gutiérrez, 2020). In light of it, Warren et al. (2020) call for “expansive and insurgent ways of learning and acting in, with, and across disciplines” and “the refusal of settled forms of disciplinary knowledge and practice” (p. 278). I contend that the two cases essentially call for theoretical and methodological boldness in the study of the real world and its political reality and complexity (Philip & Sengupta, 2021). They ask us to focus on both science, as a context of the study of learning, and becoming in movement next to the learning and becoming in science as its object. The two are interrelated and cannot be separated. In attending to both, the two case studies offer rich insights into fostering scientific citizenship in an uncertain world as they suggest a move toward nonrepresentational and nonbinary understandings of learning and becoming in movement, with interconnectedness being the norm. The cases call for a posthumanist stance to research and practice of sorts which in itself is “an enactment of knowing-in-being that emerges in the event of doing research itself” (Taylor, 2016, p. 18). What are its implications then for science education, design studies in science, and teacher education? I would suggest it calls for a new analytical stance and deep engagement with wayfaring, knotting and meshworking in science while leaving behind once for all visions of “singularity, neutrality, and an objectified universe, subject to human mastery” (Warren et  al., 2020, p.  278). All of us would do well to “disallow conceptual flattening and colonial enclosure” by “opening ourselves to living more ethically and politically responsive relations” (p. 279). And that begins essentially with each one of us taking on that lens with dignity and enacting it daily in our teaching and research practices and joint work with communities and their members in ways the two case studies underline well.

References Avraamidou, L. (2020). Science identity as a landscape of becoming: Rethinking recognition and emotions through an intersectional lens. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 15, 323–345. Bang, M. (2020). Learning on the move toward just, sustainable, and culturally thriving futures. Cognition and Instruction, 38(3), 434–444. https://doi.org/10.1080/07370008.2020.1777999 Carlone, H. B., & Johnson, A. (2007). Understanding the science experiences of successful women of color: Science identity as an analytic lens. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 44(8), 1187–1218. Collins, P. H. (2009). Black feminist thought. Routledge.

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Contassel, J. (2020). Restorying Indigenous landscapes: Community regeneration and resurgence. In N. J. Turner (Ed.), Plants, people, and places (pp. 350–365). McGill-Queen’s University Press. Escobar, A. (2018). Designs for the pluriverse. Duke University Press. Godec, S. (2018). Sciencey girls: Discourses supporting working-class girls to identify with science. Education Sciences, 8(19), 1–17. Gonsalves, A. (2020). Operationalizing intersectionality to understand recognition in the landscape of becoming. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 15, 347–357. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s11422-­019-­09964-­5 Gutiérrez, K. D. (2020). When learning as movement meets learning on the move. Cognition and Instruction, 38(3), 427–433. Holland, D., & Lave, J. (2000). History in person. Oxford University Press. Holland, D., Lachicotte, W., Skinner, D., & Cain, C. (1998). Identity and agency in cultural worlds. Harvard University Press. Ingold, T. (2011). Being alive. Routledge. Johnson, A. (2020). An intersectional physics identity framework for studying physics settings. In A. Gonsalves & A. T. Danielsson (Eds.), Physics education and gender (pp. 53–80). Springer. Kimmerer, R. W. (2013). Braiding Sweetgrass. Milkweed Edition. Lave, J. (2012). Changing practice. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 19, 156–171. Leander, K. M., & Hollett, T. (2017). The embodied rhythms of learning: From learning across settings to learners crossing settings. International Journal of Education Research, 84, 100–110. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijer.2016.11.007 Philip, T. M., & Sengupta, P. (2021). Theories of learning as theories of society: A contrapuntal approach to expanding disciplinary authenticity in computing. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 30(2), 330–349. https://doi.org/10.1080/10508406.2020.1828089 Rahm, J., Gonsalves, A., & Lachaîne, A. (2021). Young women of color figuring science and identity within and beyond an afterschool science program. Journal of the Learning Sciences., 31, 199–236. https://doi.org/10.1080/10508406.2021.1977646 Smith, T. L. (2012). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and Indigenous people. Zed Books. Tagalik, S., Baker, K., Karetak, J., & Rahm, J. (2022, July Under revision). Rebuilding relations and countering erasure through community-driven and owned science: A key tool to Inuit self-­ determination and social transformations. Journal of Research in Science Teaching. Takeuchi, M.  A., Sengupta, P., Shanahan, M.-C., Adams, J.  D., & Hachem, M. (2020). Transdisciplinarity in STEM education: A critical review. Studies in Science Education, 56(2), 213–253. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057267.2020.1755802 Taylor, C. A. (2016). Edu-crafting a cacophonous ecology: Posthumanist research practices for education. In C.  A. Taylor & C.  Hughes (Eds.), Posthuman research practices in education (pp. 5–24). Palgrave. Vossoughi, S., Jackson, A., Chen, S., Roldan, W., & Escudé, M. (2020). Embodied pathways and ethical trails: Studying learning in and through relational histories. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 29(2), 183–223. https://doi.org/10.1080/10508406.2019.1693380 Wade-Jaimes, K., & Schwartz, R. (2019). “I don’t think it’s science:” African American girls and the figured world of school science. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 56, 679–706. https://doi.org/10.1002/tea.21521 Warren, B., Vossoughi, S., Rosebery, A.  S., Bang, M., & Taylor, E. (2020). Multiple ways of knowing: Re-imagining disciplinary learning. In N. Nasir, C. Lee, R. Pea, & M. McKinney de Roystone (Eds.), Handbook of the cultural foundations of learning (pp. 277–293). Routledge. Wiseman, D., & Kreuger, J. (2019). Science education in Nunavut: Being led by Inuit Quaujimajatuqangit. In C.  D. Tippet & T.  M. Milford (Eds.), Science education in Canada (pp. 287–310). Springer.

Chapter 3

Looking Toward the Future: Learning from Investigations with Newly Hired Science Teachers Julie A. Luft

3.1 Looking Toward the Future: Learning from Investigations with Newly Hired Science Teachers My interest in newly hired science teachers emerged from my professional learning work with teachers. Early in my academic career, I focused on supporting teachers in their use of inquiry instruction in the science classroom. One of the early professional learning programs that I studied embedded “inquiry-based demonstration classrooms” (see Luft, 2001; Luft & Pizzini, 1998) within a professional learning program. These classrooms provided teachers who were new to inquiry instruction with an opportunity to watch the instruction of experienced peers who were well-­ versed in this technique. Benefits for teachers who watched a demonstration classroom included an opportunity to observe a teacher instructing a group of students in the same grade band as their own students, experience an inquiry-oriented lesson in action, and—perhaps most importantly—discuss the instruction of the class with the demonstration teacher. Teachers who attended demonstration classes paid attention to different aspects of inquiry instruction and implemented the technique differently in their own classrooms. Often the teachers could create opportunities for their own students to generate questions and collect data, but they struggled with supporting students in creating scientifically oriented explanations. They also faced different challenges when implementing inquiry instruction, with newly hired science teachers struggling more than their experienced counterparts. Even when newly hired science teachers completed a strong preparation program on inquiry instruction, they still found it challenging to have students analyse data and draw conclusions. J. A. Luft (*) Mary Frances Early College of Education, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 G. S. Carvalho et al. (eds.), Fostering Scientific Citizenship in an Uncertain World, Contributions from Science Education Research 13, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32225-9_3

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I wanted to understand why well-started science teachers struggled in using inquiry, and I wanted to know what could be done to strengthen their instruction in these early years. These questions resulted in my examination of the literature on early career, induction, and beginning teachers. At the time (the 1990s), most of the published work in teacher education was focused on either the initial certification or the professional learning process (Fig. 3.1), with some emerging work focused on induction teachers (e.g., Gold, 1996; Huling-Austin, 1990; Powell, 1997). These studies focused on teaching in general and overlooked the particular challenges in learning to teach science. Even studies in the domain of science teacher education have left a notable gap in research on newly hired science teachers. The few studies that attend to science teachers simply underscore their challenges in learning to teach science and highlight the uniqueness of the early-career period (e.g., Loughran, 1994; Brickhouse & Bodner, 1992; Simmons et al., 1999). Science teacher education studies lack Feiman-Nemser’s (2001) vision of a seamless transition from initial certification programs through the first years of teaching. To try to fill this gap in the literature, I initiated a line of work focused on describing and understanding the learning and instruction of newly hired science teachers in the midst of different professional development programs. Over the years, these studies have added to what we know about newly hired science teachers, but they have also revealed how little we know. This chapter shares what I have learned over the years and explains why the community of science educators should make it a priority to follow and study our teachers in their first years in the classroom. There are at least three important reasons to study newly hired teachers. First, the information obtained can inform our decision-making. Studies with newly hired teachers can provide data about how newly hired teachers are learning. These data are the basis for evidence-based decisions about how to configure initial certification programs to give beginning teachers the best possible start. Second, the results can illuminate dimensionality, which involves the unique position in time and place occupied by newly hired science teachers. These studies reveal the complexity of learning to teach science and enable us to better understand the process of learning to teach throughout one’s career. For example, these studies can challenge prevailing views about teacher learning and highlight the critical nature of the context in which newly hired teachers work. Third, such studies provide information on durability, which is the persistence or tenacity of various qualities associated with the teacher education process. We can learn, for instance, which practices or knowledge are carried forward from initial certification programs into the first years or how new teachers build their capacity for inquiry instruction. In the following sections, I will elaborate and provide examples pertaining to these areas.

Preservice science teacher learning

Newly hired science teacher learning

Fig. 3.1  Science teacher learning over time

In-service science teacher learning

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3.2 Decision Making Science educators should be focused on improving the learning environment of our initially certified and newly hired teachers. To accomplish this, we need to collect and analyse data pertaining to their learning and work in the classroom. Data drawn from the first years of teaching can reveal how initial teacher education programs, the teaching of initial education classes, and critical field experiences influence the learning and actions of newly hired science teachers. With data from the first years of teaching, science educators can make evidence-based decisions about preparing future science teachers. There are certainly many models for this process. Love (2001, 2008) describes a collaborative process of evidence-based decision-making that can involve teachers, administrators, and others working with and in schools. When these different individuals are involved in the collection and analysis of data, change can occur that improves both teachers’ instruction and students’ learning. Love emphasises the need for a collaborative process to identify areas of study, the collection and analysis of data, and the reflection and application of the results. This process includes the following (see Love, 2001, pp. 32–52): • Framing the question. The question should come from the group, be of interest to the group, and provide information that can guide modifications or change the school or program. It can be a close-up question focused on an event or an instructional approach, or a wide-angle question that looks more broadly at an issue of interest. • Collecting data. Once the question is selected, the group should identify the data to be collected, how the data will be collected, and who will be responsible for collecting the data. • Analysing the data. Before the data are examined, it is important to revisit the purpose of the study and determine how the data will support the purpose. Those analysing the data must look for trends and patterns that relate to the research question. When meaningful trends and patterns are agreed upon, the group should generate explanations from the data. • Having a data-driven discussion. When the data is shared with a larger group, it is important to keep the focus on improvement, balance the good news with the bad news, and not force conclusions. In addition, simple representations of the data ensure many people can participate in the discussion. • Making decisions and taking action. After the discussion of the data, a few decisions should be made about what should be done as a result. These specific actions should have consensus among the group. • Monitoring the results. As actions are undertaken, it is important to monitor the changes that are or are not occurring. Identifying indicators of progress can ensure a team is focused on specific areas and not distracted by unrelated events. In the secondary science education program at the University of Georgia, my colleagues and I followed this specific process in order to learn whether our teachers

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experienced a seamless transition from their initial certification program to their first years of teaching (see Luft et  al., 2019). We specifically asked, “How well-­ prepared are our secondary science teachers to engage in sound science instruction?” We anticipated that collecting data from different individuals and analysing the data collectively would provide important insights into the preparation of our teachers. The collaborative, wide-angle approach suggested by Love (2001) seemed perfect for the group. The research process began by forming a study group of individuals interested and invested in the success of newly hired secondary science teachers.1 The group consisted of faculty from the colleges of education and sciences who instruct the courses of preservice teachers, graduate students, and secondary school staff responsible for supporting newly hired teachers. This stakeholder group determined that data needed to be collected from preservice teachers, newly hired science teachers, university faculty who work directly with both groups of teachers, and school administrators. We developed surveys that were sent to each of the target populations and collected documents related to the instruction of the preservice teachers (e.g., course syllabi). As the surveys were returned and the documents analysed, three graduate students and two faculty members examined the data and developed charts that could represent the data to the stakeholder group. The analysed data were shared in a large stakeholder group meeting so that all of the individuals could provide their insights about the data. The conversation was balanced and focused on the strengths and areas of improvement associated with the program. While we discussed many topics, the topic of promoting equitable instruction for all students was of significant interest to the group. Starting with the data from our newly hired teachers, we found that many of our teachers did not feel well-prepared to teach diverse students after they graduated from our program (Fig.  3.2). Approximately 50% of our surveyed teachers reported being able to teach diverse students moderately well, slightly well, or not at all, with 3% unable to determine whether they were or were not able to teach diverse students.

Fig. 3.2  Example of analysed data. (Note: These conclusions are the result of document and survey data from 51 preservice teachers)  This project was associated with National Science Foundation, Grant 175826 and 1950153. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. 1

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Another data source involved an analysis of the syllabi from the preservice courses. To evaluate the syllabi, we opted to use a rubric with specific areas and levels of performance. As a team, we developed a simple rubric that had three target areas: knowing students, assessing students, and being equity-oriented. Within each of these areas, we had rating levels of low, medium, and high. When the different syllabi were analysed, we found that our classes were high in providing preservice students with opportunities to learn about their students. However, we did not do well in providing future teachers with opportunities to learn how to assess students and revise their instruction. Nor did we do well in providing opportunities to work with diverse students, that is, students of racial or ethnic backgrounds different from that of our preservice teachers, most of whom were White. With this data, we made plans to improve the equity-oriented experiences in our courses and program. We decided to start a book club for faculty and preservice teachers that involved reading and discussing a book focused on the inequities in education and approaches to resolving these inequities in the classroom. The book club would be required for teachers who knew they would be working in more challenging schools that tended to have high percentages of Black or Hispanic students. Meetings would be at a time people could attend, every other week for an hour. Three years later, we still have a book club in place that is coordinated by faculty and graduate students. The preservice teachers report that the book club has been a highlight of their educational program because of the informal and confidential nature of the meetings. We are currently following these teachers into their first years in the classroom to see how the book club and similar interventions have affected their first years of teaching. This example highlights the importance of decision-making based on evidence from newly hired teachers. Using a variety of sources to collect data from our teachers enabled us to add a new experience to our initial teacher education program. This addition is being studied to understand if it better supports our teachers during their preservice years.

3.3 Dimensionality Another reason to focus on newly hired science teachers is the dimensionality they provide to our understanding of learning to teach. Information drawn from newly hired teachers reflects a particular time (the first years of teaching) and place (the school context), as well as teachers’ individual backgrounds. In the United States, for instance, data from 2015 to 2016 indicated that newly hired teachers (5 years of experience or fewer) comprised 22.4% of the educational workforce (Garcia & Weiss, 2019). Of these teachers, 24.6% worked in high-poverty schools, and 31.5% lacked various teaching credentials (Garcia & Weiss, 2019). Clearly, there is considerable variation in newly hired teachers’ education and work settings. Furthermore, their experiences as classroom teachers are different from those in preservice programs and those with more than 5 years of experience. This has implications for those of us who prepare teachers or support them in their early years.

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Research in science teacher education requires the involvement not just of researchers but also of teacher educators, teachers, and other actors, as depicted in the recent work by Erduran and Guilfoyle (2022). They created a figure that illustrates the space of science teacher education and the embedded areas of research. While they acknowledge the limitations of this figure and their initial thoughts about science teacher education, they do depict a space that gives science teacher educators and researchers room to discuss the richness and complexity of science teacher education. In their portrayal of the activity of science teacher education, they highlight some of the most pertinent areas of study. They acknowledge that science teacher education draws upon different disciplines, different theoretical traditions, and contextual issues. They also suggest that science teacher educators and researchers should take into account the career trajectories of science teachers. This is an important part of dimensionality to consider because teachers are often grouped into preservice or in-service categories. Teachers are not viewed as changing throughout their careers. Recent reviews of research on science teacher education reveal this oversight. For instance, in 2009, a search in three science education and one educational journal from 1995 to 2006 resulted in 20 articles (7% of the total number of articles) focused on early career teachers (Luft, 2009). A more recent and comprehensive search of journals through different databases, spanning 2011–2020, identified only 48 articles pertaining to early-career teachers (Navy et al., 2022). While this reflects an increase in the number of such studies on newly hired science teachers, the increase is modest compared to the entire field of research. To highlight how dimensionality research contributes to our work with newly hired science teachers, I want to share some of my research on out-of-field teaching. Most research on out-of-field teaching is focused on teachers in general. With this orientation, it is difficult to understand how newly hired science teachers are impacted by this phenomenon. The general studies on newly hired teachers neglect the scientific disciplines and overlook the importance of teacher knowledge to the instruction of teachers. Fortunately, more studies are emerging on newly hired science teachers, and these are revealing the malleability of disciplinary knowledge. To begin with, educators should be concerned about out-of-field teaching. For example, the 2013 survey of 10,000 seventh- to tenth-grade Australian teachers asked about their degree of teaching in- and out-of-field (see Weldon, 2016). Teachers classified as in-field had studied at the tertiary level or higher and had taken a teaching methods course in the subject they were teaching. Teachers classified as out-of-field had no subject matter background and/or had not taken a methods course in the disciplinary area of instruction. This data on secondary teachers’ points to the preponderance of out-of-field teaching (Fig. 3.3). Approximately 55% of the physics teachers had adequate disciplinary preparation and an appropriate methods course. Among the other 45%, 22% had neither the disciplinary preparation nor an appropriate methods course, and 33% of the teachers were missing either disciplinary or methods coursework. In general, more physics teachers experienced some degree of being out-of-field than did the other science teachers. As a whole,

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Fig. 3.3  Secondary science teachers and their degree of teaching in-field or out-of-field. (Note: This data is from Weldon, 2016, p. 3)

Australian science teachers are out-of-field between 28% and 43% of the time, and most of these teachers had five or fewer years of experience (Weldon, 2016). In the United States, Taylor et al. (2020) examined the 2018 National Survey of Science and Mathematics Education+ data to determine the degree of out-of-field teaching in science. Their data included approximately 2,500 teachers in middle and high school. In comparing teachers’ degree subjects to the classes they reported teaching, the researchers found that teachers in their first five years were more likely to be out-of-field than experienced teachers. Specifically, 66% of teachers in their first five years were assigned to teach out-of-field, while only 56% of experienced teachers were assigned to teach out-of-field. In middle school, 91% of teachers in their first five years were assigned to teach out-of-field, compared to 87% of veteran teachers. Overall, the study concluded that out-of-field teaching is pervasive among teachers with fewer than five years of experience, especially in the middle school setting. From these reported data, we know that many newly hired science teachers are teaching out-of-field. Unfortunately, little is known about the consequences of out-­ of-­field teaching on newly hired science teachers. Recognising this problem, Singh et al. (2021) examined the data of 17 physical science teachers in the United States who were in their first three years of teaching. The teachers were followed from their first to their third year of teaching, as they taught in- and out-of-field. There were observations of the teachers as they taught each year, and there were interviews about their instructional decisions. These documents were used to determine the quality of their science instruction and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). The analysis focused on how the teachers enacted and considered the scientific practices. These practices are highlighted in the Next Generation Science Standards [NGSS] (NGSS Lead States, 2013) and include, for example, asking questions, generating explanations, constructing models, and communicating ideas and methods related to science. Singh et al. (2021) concluded that in-field teachers used more scientific practices in their classes than did out-of-field teachers. In addition, in-field

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teachers’ practices were often connected to one another. The out-of-field teachers, however, used the scientific practices infrequently and in a very isolated manner. In addition, it was rare for the out-of-field teachers to improve their PCK (as related to the practices) over time. This study is in stark contrast to the PCK literature that suggests teachers enhance and improve their PCK over time. Being in-field or out-of-field impacted science teachers’ PCK and their use of scientific practices. When disciplinary knowledge and instructional assignment were not aligned, teachers’ PCK and practices were constrained over time (Singh et al., 2021). The authors suggested the lack of alignment resulted in teachers using basic knowledge and instructional practices instead of the nuanced knowledge and practices emphasised during their initial certification programs. They also added that out-of-field teachers might not be able to modify or build their knowledge or practices unless they have specific disciplinary support that continues over time. These studies are providing new insights into the work of newly hired science teachers in different ways. They point to the complexity of learning to teach in the early years, over time, and within specific settings. These studies add dimensionality to our current knowledge of teacher learning. More importantly, scholars and educators looking at these studies gain new insights that can help us better prepare preservice science teachers and support newly hired science teachers. For instance, emphasising the interconnectedness of science practices in different disciplinary areas during initial certification coursework could help newly hired out-of-field science teachers to enact the vision of the NGSS. With ongoing professional learning, out-of-field science teachers may continue to build their knowledge and practices. This topic, however, needs to be studied in order to determine the durability of knowledge regarding this approach. This is my next topic.

3.4 Durability A final way that investigations on newly hired science teachers can be beneficial is in understanding the durability of the initial teacher preparation experience. Durability is the persistence of knowledge, behaviours, or cognitive constructs in teachers that originated in teacher education programs. Durability is often a result of carefully designed initial certification and induction programs. When something is durable, it is central and can be connected to, built upon, or used to anchor future knowledge, practices, or cognitive constructs. Ideally, something that is durable is an asset in the teaching of science. There are three conditions contributing to the durable learning of science teachers. We refer to these conditions as “opportunities to learn” (Navy et al., 2022). In our most recent analysis of research on newly hired teachers of science, we found that opportunities to learn existed in preparation programs, early career professional learning programs, and in the context in which teachers work. Within preparation programs, we found that purposeful work with students is enhanced by the collective

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involvement of experienced teachers, preservice teachers, and educators. An example of this is found in Thompson and Emmer’s (2019) case study examining the influence of collaborations on three elementary teachers’ instruction. In their program, preservice teachers, university science educators, and newly hired teachers worked collectively in classrooms to support the learning of students. The authentic classroom setting provided a learning experience that enhanced the confidence and knowledge of both the preservice and newly hired elementary science teachers. We also noticed that purposeful opportunities to learn were critical in laying important groundwork for new teacher learning over time. This type of learning was evident in different ways. Kang and Windschitl (2018) compared preservice teachers from a practice-based program to teachers from an initial certification program that did not embrace practice-based learning. Their study involved the analysis of the lessons of the first-year teachers to determine whether there were connections between the lessons and the initial certification programs (e.g., specific instructional practices). Their analysis revealed a significant difference between the preservice teachers from different initial certification programs. Those from the practice-based program had crucial forms of science instruction that were not found in the other programs. The study concluded that specific practices developed during preservice coursework could transfer to the first year of teaching. We also found science-specific induction programs for newly hired teachers to be important in reinforcing the knowledge, practices, and cognitive constructs emphasised in initial certification programs. In an earlier study on newly hired science teachers (Luft et al., 2011), we found that induction programming was important in reinforcing practices learned during initial certification programs. More recently, we followed over 100 teachers who participated in different 2-year induction programs through their first 5 years of teaching and documented their instructional practices and PCK (Luft et  al., 2022a, b). We found that science-focused induction programs were essential in the first years of teaching in terms of supporting the teachers’ instruction. When the induction programs concluded, there were small amounts of sound science instruction among the teachers who participated in the science-specific induction programs. In trying to understand what knowledge carries forward to the first years of teaching, my research group has been interested in the idea of teaching “noticing.” Noticing often involves teachers identifying noteworthy aspects of classroom events (van Es & Sherin, 2008). Teacher noticing is rooted in the notion of expertise (Sherin et al., 2011). That is, expert teachers notice classroom events differently than new teachers. Their ability to notice various forms of instruction is linked to their pedagogical knowledge or PCK. To study teacher noticing, newly hired and experienced teachers are shown 10-min videos of classroom instruction wherein a teacher uses scientific practices, highleverage practices, and other instructional practices (Luft et al., 2022a, b). We ask teachers to indicate when they see something “important and significant in the teaching of science” by raising a hand. We then paused the video so that the teacher could share what was significant and why. We asked follow-up questions to gain more insights into that teacher’s thinking. All teacher comments are audio-recorded.

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We have looked at this data in different ways. We have documented if the teachers notice the teacher’s or student’s actions. We also note if they see teaching that is specific to science or general instruction. Science-specific teaching may include, for example, asking questions or drawing conclusions from data. General teaching may include, for example, those instructional events that can occur in any discipline, such as cooperative learning, group work, or listening and taking notes. We also document how the teacher interprets the section of the video. This type of coding is influenced by the work of Sherin and Russ (2014) and focuses on how the teacher interprets the video event. A teacher stating there is something the teacher is familiar with, something the teacher would do differently, or something the teacher likes about the event are examples of these codes. Figure 3.4 depicts the differences between newly hired (five years of experience or fewer) and experienced science teachers. Experienced teachers frequently noticed reformed-based instruction (science practices) and instances when the teacher in the video elicited and interpreted students’ ideas. Newly hired teachers frequently noticed when the teacher recorded student ideas, shared goals, checked for understanding, used routines, and elicited and interpreted students’ ideas. Many of the events noticed by the newly hired teachers can be attributed to their teacher preparation programs, but their failure to notice other events suggests areas to be strengthened through early career professional learning programs. Thinking about supporting and cultivating durable practices among our early career teachers is important. But we will not know what is durable until we investigate the knowledge and practices of newly hired science teachers or follow them throughout their first years of teaching. This evidence will ultimately be important in determining how to structure our initial certification programs and configure

Fig. 3.4  Webchart comparing “noticing” among newly hired and experienced science teachers. (Note: This data is based upon newly hired science teachers (n = 6) and experienced science teachers notice (n = 11))

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induction programs that support the ongoing learning of teachers. Without collecting and looking at data pertaining to durability, we are only aspiring to prepare well-started science teachers.

3.5 Moving Forward By focusing on newly hired science teachers, we can improve our programs for initial certification and newly hired teachers and gain more insights into the complexity of being an early career teacher. More importantly, I hope initial investigations with newly hired teachers expand into studies that build our knowledge of this population. As additional investigations are undertaken, educational researchers should be aware of two areas that can help advance our understanding of newly hired science teachers: the use of different research approaches and the deliberate use of theoretical and conceptual frameworks. I want to address each of these briefly.

3.6 Longitudinal and Transnational Studies Some of the most important research approaches we can engage in are longitudinal and transnational studies. Following teachers from initial certification programs through their first year or over their first several years can, for instance, reveal the complexity of learning, the nuances of context, or how early career teachers build their instruction. These studies can help science educators make informed decisions about how to support and work with early career science teachers. Similarly, exploring this population in different countries will give us new insights into how teachers are supported in learning and teaching. Transnational studies can reveal how culture can influence the support of new teachers and inform science educators in various countries of potential new approaches to try. Collectively, these types of studies can improve our work with science teachers and suggest new ways and venues in which to support early career science teachers.

3.7 Theoretical and Conceptual Frameworks The use of theoretical frameworks in educational research has increased dramatically over the last 20 years. Theoretical frameworks are essential in providing insights into, for example, how teachers learn (e.g., social constructivism, constructivism), how equity is supported (e.g., critical race theory), or how a school context can influence the persistence of a teacher (e.g., institutional theory). Using a theoretical framework during a study can clarify our assumptions regarding the study and situate our conclusions within the field of education. Conceptual frameworks guide

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our understanding of the educational phenomena being studied. These frameworks provide a reasoned overview of the studied phenomenon. Different from theoretical frameworks, conceptual frameworks depict the area under investigation and clarify relationships in the studied environment. In terms of newly hired science teachers, conceptual frameworks can be constructed to clarify how examinations of student work can help build a new teacher’s knowledge or how a professional learning experience can improve a teacher’s knowledge and practice. Simply put, both advance our knowledge, but in different ways. Theoretical frameworks suggest the “how,” while conceptual frameworks clarify the “what” of the studied phenomenon (Luft et al., 2022c). Different theoretical and conceptual frameworks will provide new insights about newly hired science teachers.

3.8 In Closing Investigations involving newly hired science teachers can help us make strategic decisions about the adequacy of our initial certification programs, reveal a dimensionality to learning to teach science, and provide information about what carries over from an initial certification program into the first years of teaching. Engaging in this work is important, especially given the changing nature of early career teacher education across the globe. In responding to the impending challenges to this area of teacher education, we must follow and study newly hired teachers in order to understand whether we, as educators, are meeting their learning needs. These contemporary understandings can ultimately provide us with new directions that can ensure the success of this important group of teachers as they navigate both stability and change. If we overlook this essential group in the educational system, we will miss an opportunity to improve our work as science teacher educators.

References Brickhouse, N., & Bodner, G. M. (1992). The beginning science teacher: Classroom narratives of convictions and constraints. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 29(5), 471–485. Erduran, S., & Guilfoyle, L. (2022). The importance of research in science teacher education. In J. A. Luft & M. G. Jones (Eds.), Handbook of research on science teacher education (pp. 3–13). Taylor & Francis. Feiman-Nemser, S. (2001). From preparation to practice: Designing a continuum to strengthen and sustain teaching. The Teachers College Record, 103(6), 1013–1055. García, E., & Weiss, E. (2019). The teacher shortage is real, large and growing, and worse than we thought. The Perfect Storm in the Teacher Labor Market. Economic Policy Institute. Gold, Y. (1996). Beginning teacher support: Attrition, mentoring, and induction. In J. Sikula (Ed.), Handbook of research on teacher education (pp. 548–594). Macmillan. Huling-Austin, L. (1990). Teacher induction programs and internships. In W.  Houston (Ed.), Handbook of teacher education (pp. 535–548). Macmillan.

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Kang, H., & Windschitl, M. (2018). How does practice-based teacher preparation influence novices’ first-year instruction? Teachers College Record, 120(8), 1–44. Loughran, J. (1994). Bridging the gap: An analysis of the needs of second-year science teachers. Science Education, 78(4), 365–386. Love, N. (2001). Using data/getting results: A practical guide for school improvement in mathematics and science. Christopher-Gordon. Love, N. (2008). Using data to improve learning for all: A collaborative inquiry approach. Corwin Press. Luft, J.  A. (2001). Changing inquiry practice and beliefs? The impact of a one-year inquiry-­ based professional development program on the beliefs and practices of secondary science teachers. International Journal of Science Education, 23(5), 517–534. https://doi. org/10.1080/09500690121307 Luft, J. A. (2009). Exploring science teacher education: Research in the community. In K. Tobin & W.-M. Roth (Eds.), World of science education: Handbook of research in North America (pp. 547–566). Sense Publishers. Luft, J.  A., & Pizzini, E.  L. (1998). The demonstration classroom in-service: Changes in the classroom. Science Education, 82(2), 147–162. Luft, J. A., Firestone, J. B., Wong, S. S., Ortega, I., Adams, K., & Bang, E. (2011). Beginning secondary science teacher induction: A two-year mixed methods study. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 48(10), 1199–1224. Luft, J. A., Lemons, P. P., White, D. Y., Worth, E. B., Przybyla-Kuchek, J. E., & Whitt, B. (2019, September). A 360 view of a secondary science teacher education program: Recruiting and preparing well-started teachers [Conference presentation.] European Science Education Research Association conference, Bologna, Italy. Luft, J. A., Huang, Y., Watson, S., Singh, H., Ozen, H., Whitworth, B., Ruiz, Y., Tran, H., McCann, S., & Hu, N. (2022a, March). What beginning and experienced secondary science teachers notice in videos of classroom instruction [Conference presentation]. NARST: A Global Organization for Improving Science Education through Research, 95th Annual International Conference, Vancouver, Canada. Luft, J. A., Navy, S., Wong, S. S., & Hill, K. M. (2022b, March 26). The first five years of teaching science: The beliefs, knowledge, practices, and opportunities to learn of secondary science teachers. Journal of Research in Science Teaching. https://doi.org/10.1002/tea.21771 Luft, J. A., Jeong, S., Idsardi, R., & Gardner, G. (2022c). Literature reviews, theoretical frameworks, and conceptual frameworks: An introduction for new biology education researchers. CBE-Life Sciences, 21(3). https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.21-­05-­0134 Navy, S., Luft, J. A., & Msimanga, A. (2022). The learning opportunities of newly hired science teachers. In J. A. Luft & M. G. Jones (Eds.), Handbook of research on science teacher education (pp. 239–250). Taylor and Francis. NGSS Lead States. (2013). Next generation science standards: For states, by states. National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/18290 Powell, R.  P. (1997). Teaching alike: A cross-case analysis of first-career and second-career beginning teachers’ instructional convergence. Teaching and Teacher Education, 13(3), 341–356. Sherin, M. G., & Russ, R. S. (2014). Teacher noticing via video: The role of interpretive frames. In B. Calandra & P. J. Rich (Eds.), Digital video for teacher education: Research and practice (pp. 3–20). Taylor and Francis. Sherin, M. G., Jacobs, V. R., & Philipp, R. A. (2011). Situating the study of teacher noticing: Seeing through teachers’ eyes. In M. G. Sherin, V. R. Jacobs, & R. A. Philipp (Eds.), Mathematics teacher noticing: Seeing through teachers’ eyes. Taylor and Francis. Simmons, P.  E., Emory, A., Carter, T., Coker, T., Finnegan, B., Crockett, D., et  al. (1999). Beginning teachers: Beliefs and classroom actions. Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 36(8), 930–954.

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Singh, H., Luft, J. A., & Napier, J. (2021). ePCK of newly hired out-of-field teachers during their first three years of teaching. European Journal of Teacher Education, 44(5), 611–626. https:// doi.org/10.1080/02619768.2021.1943660 Taylor, J., Banilower, E., & Clayton, G. (2020). National trends in the formal content preparation of US science teachers: Implications of out-of-field teaching for student outcomes. Journal of Science Teacher Education, 31(7), 768–779. Thompson, S. L., & Emmer, E. (2019). Closing the experience gap: The influence of an immersed methods course in science. Journal of Science Teacher Education, 30(3), 300–319. van Es, E. A., & Sherin, M. G. (2008). Mathematics teachers’ “learning to notice” in the context of a video club. Teaching and Teacher Education, 24(2), 244–276. Weldon, P. R. (2016). Out-of-field teaching in Australian secondary schools. Policy Insights, 6. Melbourne: Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER).

Chapter 4

Teaching Nature of Science Through Stories Based on the History of the Balance of Nature Idea: Insights from the First Cycle of a Developmental Study Georgios Ampatzidis and Marida Ergazaki

4.1 Introduction Nature of Science (NOS) is considered an important part of scientific literacy, and so it has become central to science education research for several decades now (Holbrook & Rannikmae, 2007; Leden et al., 2015; Lederman et al., 2013). Although there is not a commonly accepted definition of it, NOS concerns the kind of knowledge scientists produce, and it is strongly related to how they work in order to produce this knowledge (Dagher & Erduran, 2016; Lederman, 2019). NOS is a hard topic for both students and teachers (Akerson et al., 2019; Erduran & Dagher, 2014). A popular approach to teaching and learning about NOS is based on its conceptualization through ‘NOS aspects’ such as, for instance, the empirical basis or the tentativeness of scientific knowledge (Lederman, 2007; Lederman & Lederman, 2014). Although criticized (Irzik & Nola, 2011), this conceptualization (aka the ‘general aspects conceptualization of NOS’) may help students improve their NOS understanding (Kampourakis, 2016). General NOS aspects may be introduced to students either per se or in connection with specific scientific content (Abd-El-Khalick & Lederman, 2000). In the latter case, they may be integrated, implicitly or preferably explicitly, in student-led lab inquiries, lessons based on current cases of scientific work, or lessons based on cases from the history of science (Deng et al., 2011; Lorsbach et al., 2019; Yacoubian & BouJaoude, 2010). It has been suggested that the use of historical contexts in G. Ampatzidis (*) University of Thessaly, Volos, Greece e-mail: [email protected] M. Ergazaki University of Patras, Patras, Greece e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 G. S. Carvalho et al. (eds.), Fostering Scientific Citizenship in an Uncertain World, Contributions from Science Education Research 13, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32225-9_4

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order to introduce general NOS aspects explicitly enhances the effectiveness of NOS teaching and learning (Abd-El-Khalick & Lederman, 2000; Dai et al., 2021; Faria et al., 2012; Rudge & Howe, 2009). Historical science stories are considered a potentially strong means towards a better understanding of NOS (Allchin et al., 2014; Höttecke et al., 2012). Such stories seem to engage students more effectively due to the strong personal element they bring to the teaching and learning about science by shedding light on the persons who worked for it (Williams & Rudge, 2019). In fact, using the history of science to introduce general NOS aspects appears to be an interesting and popular strand in NOS literature (Rudge et  al., 2014). We decided to contribute to this strand ourselves by drawing particularly on the history of the idea of the Balance of Nature (BON). More specifically, working with challenging the idea of the Balance of Nature (BON-idea) in students’ reasoning for quite some time (Ampatzidis & Ergazaki, 2014, 2016, 2017, 2018a, b), we noticed that the history of this persistent idea, which is much older than ecology itself and had a remarkable influence on it (Cooper, 2001; Cuddington, 2001), might be used for highlighting NOS. Considering this, as well as the potential of historical science stories as educational tools, we addressed the question of whether it is feasible to design a learning environment that could effectively support students of educational sciences in advancing their NOS understanding based on stories inspired by aspects of the history of the BON-idea. During the first phase of our research, we explored the NOS aspects that could be promoted in our learning environment. We came up with the socio-cultural embeddedness of science, the use of imagination/creativity in doing science, the tentativeness of scientific knowledge (see Ampatzidis & Ergazaki, 2021) and the difference between scientific observations and inferences. In the second phase, we created historical stories to address the aforementioned aspects. Finally, the third phase of our research concerns testing the stories’ effectiveness through a set of research cycles with educational sciences students. In this chapter, we are particularly concerned with identifying whether and how students’ understanding of the specific NOS aspects mentioned above has been improved after their participation in the first version of our story-based learning environment. Thus, the research question we address here is ‘How students’ understanding of specific NOS aspects has been altered after their participation in the first version of our story-based learning environment?’

4.2 Methods 4.2.1 Study Overview This is a case study performed in the first cycle of a developmental research study (Akker et al., 2006) in order to test the first version of a collaborative, story-based learning environment. The learning environment was designed in the broader context of social constructivism (Driver et al., 1994; Vygotsky, 1978). Its aim was to

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support students in enhancing their understanding of specific aspects of NOS. In order to collect data about the effectiveness of our learning environment, we used a data-gathering tool (pre- and post-questionnaire) that included both closed-ended and open-ended items derived from SUSSI (Liang et al., 2006). Finally, we analyzed students’ responses and tested for the statistical significance of their progress using the quantitative analysis software SPSS.

4.2.2 The Participants The first cycle of the research we report here was carried out with 36 second-year students of educational sciences at the University of Patras. Their age was 19–20 years old, and they were all females. Our sample was conveniently selected since (a) the participants were enrolled on an optional course in ecology offered by the second author, and (b) they volunteered to take part in the study. Their consent was given after they had been (a) informed of the research goals and time schedule and (b) reassured that they could terminate their participation at any time. They had not the opportunity to formally explore NOS up to that point, and they were rather active in terms of raising and answering questions in the course’s regular classes.

4.2.3 The Learning Environment Learning Objectives As already mentioned, the learning environment aims at highlighting specific NOS aspects through the history of the BON-idea. More specifically, the NOS aspects that constitute our learning objectives (LOs) are the socio-cultural embeddedness of science, the use of imagination/creativity in doing science, the tentativeness of scientific knowledge and the difference between scientific observations and inferences (Table 4.1). Table 4.1  Learning objectives (LOs) Learning objectives: target NOS aspects LO1 Socio-cultural embeddedness of science  Science is influenced by the socio-cultural context; the values, expectations and needs of society influence scientific research and the dissemination of scientific results LO2 Creativity/imagination in doing science  Scientists use both their logic and their creativity/imagination throughout the scientific inquiry LO3 Tentativeness of scientific knowledge  Scientific knowledge may be abandoned or modified in the presence of either new data or new interpretations of pre-existing ones LO4 Observation vs inference in science  Observation and inference are quite different scientific practices

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An Overview of the Sessions Students were introduced to the target NOS aspects in three 2-h weekly sessions, all facilitated by the teacher/second author. In each session, students were provided with a worksheet and were required to (a) read the worksheet’s story that was created especially for this study, and (b) collaborate in pairs in order to respond to the worksheet’s story-based questions that were supposed to create a scaffold towards the desired conclusions about NOS. Students were also provided with the stories’ companions, which gave them information about the characters and several elements of the plot. At the end of each session, every peer group was expected to come up with responses and share them with their classmates in a teacher-facilitated whole-class discussion. Engaging students in group reading and encouraging them to write down their thoughts about the story-based, open-ended questions of the worksheets aimed at enhancing their reflection and critical dialogue. An Overview of the Design and Content of the Stories In the design of our story-based learning environment, we took into account suggestions offered by Clough (2006) and Metz et  al. (2007) with regard to enhancing the effectiveness of stories as teaching and learning tools. More specifically, we drew on strategies like, for instance, creating links between students’ prior knowledge and story details in order to provide them with more reasons for getting engaged with the stories; incorporating explicit comments that could draw students’ attention to the target NOS ideas; presenting stories in an interruptive way to facilitate students in drawing inferences. The suggested strategy of using scientists’ voices in order to highlight the human side of science and add authenticity (Clough, 2006) had a central place in our design. So, being informed by the biographies of eminent scientists who appear in the history of the BON-idea, the three stories that make up our learning environment present a fictional conversation between two of these scientists and promote specific NOS aspects. In fact, they are literary science stories in the way Klassen (2009) describes this type of narrative: short stories, larger and more detailed than anecdotes, written to stand on their literary merit and not exclusively on their historical or scientific merit. However, it is worth noticing that the scientists’ dialogue in each of them has two special features: (a) although based on the biography of the conversing scientists, it is fictional, and (b) it has the form of a casual talk in an everyday context. Thus, we claim that our literary science stories could be more specifically considered fiction talk stories (for an overview of the narrative types used in teaching and learning, see Ampatzidis & Ergazaki, 2023a). Below we present the overview of each story of the learning environment, and we provide a summary in Table 4.2. • ‘Tea for two’ Charles Darwin and his friend Joseph Dalton Hooker discuss evolution while they drink their tea. They talk about the evidence Darwin has collected in favour of the

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Table 4.2  The overview of the stories Story title ‘Tea for two’

‘Inspiration cannot wait’

‘Panta rhei’

Protagonists Charles Darwin Joseph Dalton Hooker Frederic Clements Edith Clements

Plot England, 1844  Darwin discusses with his friend Hooker his second thoughts on publishing his theory. USA, 1914  Clements discusses with his wife Edith his creative conceptualization of plant communities as ‘super-organisms’.

Target NOS aspects Socio-cultural embeddedness of science (LO1)

Frederic Clements Victor Shelford

USA, 1937  Clements discusses with his colleague Shelford the objections to his ‘super-organism view’ and admits his own reconsideration.

Tentativeness of scientific knowledge (LO3) Observation vs inference in science (LO4)

Creativity/ imagination in doing science (LO2)

theory of evolution and his hesitation to publish his conclusions. While it seems that the collected evidence strongly supports his views, Darwin appears indecisive about publishing his ideas on evolution. He reveals to Hooker that he fears the reaction of religious people of their time, like his own wife, whom he thinks will consider his theory as an attack on their beliefs (see Ampatzidis & Ergazaki, 2023a for the whole story). Darwin’s fears and Dalton’s reactions shed light on one of the ways that socio-cultural conditions may influence science. To help students realize this way (i.e. the socio-cultural restriction of scientific progress), we integrated, in their worksheet, story-based questions like these, for instance: ‘How did people think about nature at Darwin’s time?’; ‘How did Darwin think about nature according to the theory he developed?’; ‘Why does Darwin hesitate to publish his theory?’; ‘What should count the most in Darwin’s decision to publish his theory or not, according to Hooker?; ‘What seems to count the most for Darwin himself, and what’s the broader implication of this about the nature of science?’. In the whole-class discussion, the light was also shed on other ways, such as the orientation of scientific research through societal needs. • ‘Inspiration cannot wait’ Frederic Clements wakes up before dawn and looks at his notes on ecological succession. His wife, Edith Clements, joins him, and they discuss an idea of his that could explain their field observations in a unified way. Frederic Clements explains the idea he came up with: a plant community could be considered as a super-­ organism that gradually changes to reach maturity; small plants at first, then shrubs and small trees and finally the forest, i.e. the mature plant community, which undergoes no more changes and it is able to reproduce itself. Both Frederic and Edith agree that such an analogy fits well with their observations  (see Ampatzidis & Ergazaki, 2023b for the whole story). The analogy’s conceptualization in the story sheds light on one of the ways that creativity may contribute to scientific work.

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To help students realize this way (i.e. the use of creative reasoning tools), we integrated, in their worksheet, story-based questions like these, for instance: ‘By the time Frederic Clements was studying nature, the idea of ​​ecological succession had already been formed in the context of ecology and relevant studies had been published. However, Frederic Clements was the first to suggest the analogy between a plant society and an organism. What element of his character did Frederic Clements use to ‘see’ the analogy between a plant society and an organism? Do you think that the use of this element by Clements is an exception or that scientists use it quite often?’ In the whole class discussion, the light was also shed on other ways like, for instance, designing innovative ways of gathering data in terms of tools and procedures. • ‘Panta rhei’ (‘Everything flows’) Frederic Clements is invited by Victor Shelford to discuss the possibility of writing together an ecology book. As they talk, Shelford brings to the discussion Clements’ conceptualization of plant communities as super-organisms. They discuss other scientists’ objections to Clements’ views, and Clements admits that some of the criticism he has received is valid, and it made him revise his original ideas on succession to some extent. He also admits that in his more recent texts, he does not insist so much on the concept of super-organism (see Ampatzidis & Ergazaki, 2023b for the whole story). Clements’ open-mindedness towards the grounded criticism of his fellow scientists highlights one of the reasons that scientific knowledge may change through time. To help students realize this reason (i.e. the formulation of new interpretations of previous data), we integrated, in their worksheet, story-based questions like these, for instance: ‘How the difference between Cooper’s and Clements’ conclusions about the plant community as a super-organism can be explained, given that their observations concern similar plant communities?’; ‘Why did Clements modify to some extent his original ideas on ecological succession? Is the modification of scientific knowledge an exception or a rule?’. In the whole class discussion, the light was also shed on other ways, such as the emergence of new data or the development of new technological tools at the service of science.

4.2.4 Data Collection and Analysis The data-gathering tool we used before and after the implementation of the learning environment was a 20-item pre/post questionnaire derived from SUSSI, a bigger instrument that evaluates students’ understanding of NOS aspects (Liang et  al., 2006). For each of the four NOS aspects we integrated into the learning environment (Table 4.1), students dealt with five items: four 5-point Likert items and one two-tier two-choice item. More specifically, the four Likert items per target NOS aspect were the same as in the SUSSI questionnaire. In each of them, students were given one statement

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concerning the NOS aspect in question, and they had to choose whether they ‘strongly disagreed’, ‘disagreed’, ‘were uncertain’, ‘agreed’ or ‘strongly agreed’ with it. Some examples per target NOS aspect: • Socio-cultural embeddedness of science: ‘Cultural values and expectations determine how science is conducted and accepted.’; ‘Scientific research is not influenced by society and culture because scientists are trained to conduct “pure”, unbiased studies’. • Creativity/imagination in doing science: ‘Scientists use their imagination and creativity when they analyze and interpret data’; ‘Scientists do not use their imagination and creativity because these can interfere with objectivity’. • Tentativeness of scientific knowledge: ‘Scientific theories may be completely replaced by new theories in light of new evidence’; ‘Scientific theories based on accurate experimentation will not be changed’. • Observation vs inference in science: ‘Scientists’ observations of the same event may be different because scientists’ prior knowledge may affect their observations’; ‘Scientists’ observations of the same event will be the same because scientists are objective’. Ιn each of the four two-tier two-choice items, students were given two optional statements about the target NOS aspect, and they (a) had to choose the right statement, and (b) justify their choice. In this case, the original SUSSI items were slightly elaborated after piloting the questionnaire with a think-aloud protocol. For instance, the original SUSSI item about creativity/imagination, ‘With examples, explain why scientists use OR do not use imagination and creativity’ was modified as follows: ‘Choose the statement with which you agree the most and explain your choice with examples: (A) Scientists use imagination and creativity (B) scientists do not use imagination and creativity’. Similarly, the other three items were modified as follows: • Socio-cultural embeddedness of science: ‘Choose the statement with which you agree the most and explain your choice with examples: (A) The socio-cultural context influences scientific research; (B) the socio-cultural context does not influence scientific research.’ • Tentativeness of scientific knowledge: ‘Choose the statement with which you agree the most and explain your choice with examples: (A) Scientific theories may change; (B) scientific theories remain unchanged.’ • Observation vs inference in science: ‘Choose the statement with which you agree the most and explain your choice with examples: (A) Scientists’ observations are the same as their inferences; (B) Scientists’ observations differ from their inferences.’ The face validity of the two-tier two-choice part of the questionnaire was tested by students who had a similar profile to the participants of the study, with a think-aloud protocol. Its content validity was tested by an experienced science educator. The validity and reliability of the Likert part of the questionnaire have been tested by Liang et al. (2006).

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Students’ responses to the Likert items were scored from 1 to 5, as Liang et al. (2006) suggest: the score 1 was given to the worst choice and the score 5 to the best. Since some of the Likert items were positive and others negative, the score 5 was given to ‘strongly agree’ or to ‘strongly disagree’, accordingly. Students’ responses to the two-tier two-choice items were coded as: (a) ‘unclassified’, when stating ignorance (e.g. ‘I do not understand the question’), (b) ‘naïve’, when including the wrong statement or the right statement with a problematic justification, (c) ‘transitional’, when including the right statement with a right but incomplete justification, and (d) ‘informed’, when including the right statement with a more complete justification. The coding was performed by both authors with a satisfactory agreement (Cohen’s Kappa: 0.85). The coded responses were scored from 0 to 3 (0 was given to the lower and 3 to the higher category, as suggested by Liang et al., 2006). Finally, we calculated the mean scores of the Likert items, as well as the mean scores of the two-tier two-choice items per NOS aspect. Since the number of participants was relatively small, we evaluated the pre/post differences by running Wilcoxon tests.

4.3 Results Students appeared to improve their NOS understanding after taking part in our story-based learning environment. As shown in Fig. 4.1, the mean scores of their post-responses to the Likert items about each NOS aspect were higher than those of their pre-responses. Moreover, all the pre/post differences were found to be

Fig. 4.1  Students’ mean scores on the Likert items per NOS aspect; asterisks indicate statistically significant differences (p