This article takes its point of departure from the younger generation's problematic relationship with time and the future. A general sense of changeability and directionlessness in society compromises young people's confidence in themselves to make a difference as individuals in important global issues affecting their futures, such as climate change. Given recent aims and commitments of science education to promote sustainable development and student agency, this study explores how science teaching can help students imagine and face possible future scenarios and develop agency in the present to influence them. This article presents a science education approach to equip secondary school students with skills of futures thinking and agency that we call “future‐scaffolding skills.” It also shows the process of building an operational definition for recognizing those skills in students' discourse and actions. For this purpose, an empirical study was carried out in the context of a teaching–learning module on climate change, consisting of activities inspired by the field of futures studies. Essays, individual and group interviews, questionnaires, and video recordings of students' final projects were collected from 24 students (16–19‐years old) from three European countries. The results contribute to operationally defining “future‐scaffolding skills,” consisting of “structural skills” (the ability to recognize temporal, logical and causal relationships and build systemic views) and “dynamical skills” (the ability to navigate scenarios, relating local details to global views, past to present and future, and individual to collective actions).

Pursuing both disciplinary authenticity and personal relevance in the teaching and learning of science in school generates tensions that should be acknowledged and resolved. This paper problematizes and explores the conceptualizations of these tensions by considering personal relevance, disciplinary authenticity, and common school science as three perspectives that entail different educational goals. Based on an analysis of the literature, we identify five facets of the tensions: content fidelity, content coverage, language and discursive norms, epistemic structure and standards, and significance. We then explore the manifestations of these facets in two different examples of the instruction and learning of physics at the advanced high school level in Israel and Italy. Our analysis suggests that (1) the manifestations of these tensions and their resolution are highly contextual. (2) While maintaining personal relevance and disciplinary authenticity requires some negotiation, the main tension that needs to be resolved is between personal relevance and common school science. (3) Disciplinary authenticity, when considered in terms of its full depth and scope, can be equipped to resolve this tension within the discipline. (4) To achieve resolution, teachers’ expertise should include not only pedagogical expertise but also a deep and broad disciplinary understanding.

The European Union pushes science education to orient toward the concept of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI; i.e., socially and ethically sensitive and inclusive processes of science and technology). Schools should further understanding on how science interacts with society and increase students' engagement in science. This exploratory study analysed concerns of 67 active, forward-looking teachers from 10 European countries using a questionnaire based on the concerns-based adoption model (C-BAM) and open-ended questions regarding the adoption of RRI into teaching. In the context of an international professional development programme on RRI, a pre/ post comparison was also carried out for 29 of the teachers. The results showed that the forerunner teachers were willing to find information and collaborate on RRI teaching and believed that RRI can engage students and be a worthwhile part of the curriculum. Yet the respondents voiced personal concerns about their ability to teach RRI, and only a few concerns were resolved during the professional development period. Teachers need extended support and networking to contextualise RRI into their science lessons. On the basis of the results, we discuss the possibilities of teaching RRI implicitly rather than explicitly in order to foster students' own reasoning about RRIrelated values. Our results also demonstrate that the customary questionnaire used with C-BAM gives a consistent picture of teachers' concerns but does not differentiate teachers enough in order to formulate a statistically sound clustering of concern profiles. We argue that with proper adjustments the questionnaire can provide more diverse and informative profiling of teachers' concerns.

The growing societal significance of nanoscience and nanotechnology (NST) entails needs for addressing these topics in school curricula. This study lays groundwork for responding to those needs in Finland. The purpose was to analyse the appropriateness of NST for secondary school curriculum contents. First, a week-long in-service teacher training course was arranged on content knowledge of NST. After attending the course, 23 experienced science teachers were surveyed regarding their views on the educational significance of these issues, and on prospects for including them into the curriculum.A questionnaire with open-ended questions was used. Qualitative content analysis of the responses revealed that the respondents considered NST as desirable contents for secondary school, but arranging instruction is problematic. The teachers emphasised the educational significance of many applications, scientific principles and ethical issues related to NST. The outcomes are discussed with reference to recent studies on teachers' barriers and educational concerns regarding NST.

Responsible Research and Innovation has become a core concept in many of the Horizon 2020 programs. In this article the concept of RRI is discussed in context of secondary education, and the interpretation used within the project ‘Irresistible’ is introduced. In the article several ways in which RRI can be incorporated in science classrooms are discussed, connected to the teaching of contemporary research taking place in universities as well as recent innovations coming from industry. The presented modules are designed in groups in which teachers work together with researchers, science educators and science center experts. As one of the educational approaches used in the modules, students created exhibits in which both the scientific content as well as the RRI concepts related to the content are demonstrated for the general public. These exhibits have been very successful as a learning tool.

A lot of expectations rest on the interdisciplinarity of nanoscience, and it has even been proposed as the deciding factor in the progress of the field [1]. What opportunities and challenges does the interdisciplinary nature of nanoscience bring to science education at different levels? This chapter first analyzes the much-discussed interdisciplinarity of nanoscience today, and then discusses how and why those features should be addressed in education.

This paper calls for greater use of educational research in the development of science exhibitions. During the past few decades, museums and science centres throughout the world have placed increasing emphasis on their educational function. Although exhibitions are the primary means of promoting visitors' learning, educational research is not often utilised when designing these learning environments. Rather, the development of exhibitions in museums and science centres tends to rely on the know-how of the staff. Reviewing and engaging in science education research would complement this expertise and support the educational role of science exhibitions. This theoretical paper therefore suggests such a research-based approach by adapting the Model of Educational Reconstruction for the purpose of exhibition development following the idea of the Model for the Personal Awareness of Science and Technology. The former model serves as a general framework to involve analytical and empirical research in the development of learning environments, while the latter model provides a specific view of visitors' learning in interaction with exhibits. The study shows how these constructivist models can be interconnected in order to apply educational research in improving the long-term learning profit of exhibition visits. The idea is illustrated with an example concerning the research-based development of a nanoscience exhibition.

A need for education in the emerging fields of nanoscience and nanotechnology (NST) has been recognized throughout the world not only at the academic level but also in terms of citizens' abilities to deal with personal, social and global issues related to NST. This doctoral dissertation lays researchbased groundwork for the future development of learning environments on NST. The aim was to map the educational needs, possibilities and challenges of bringing the topics of NST to secondary schools and out-of-school settings. To this end, the methodological framework of the Model of Educational Reconstruction and a pragmatist multi-method approach was employed to scrutinize NST from diverse educational viewpoints.The role of NST in scientific literacy was first explored through a theoretical-analytical study on the content structure, the nature and the implications of NST. Next, a group of secondary school teachers who had attended a course on NST was invited to evaluate the educational significance of the field's contents and their appropriateness for the curriculum. Another survey addressed Finnish teachers' views on barriers that hinder incorporating NST into the curriculum, and facilitators for overcoming these barriers. Specific challenges in learning and communicating NST were investigated through a literature review that was subsequently complemented with an interview study on science centre visitors' perspectives on NST.Both theoretical and empirical analyses identified several content areas as well as social and epistemological aspects of NST that render the field educationally interesting and relevant to scientific literacy. The results imply that, by addressing NST, science education could stimulate dialogue on important contemporary issues in the intersection of science, technology and society, and provide upto-date views on the nature of science. However, the teachers also pointed out a number of difficulties in arranging instruction on NST in practice. It is concluded that NST would be best incorporated in the curriculum as a transdisciplinary theme. The field has, in addition, a potential to integrate traditional science subjects and approaches by shifting the focus to the scale of natural phenomena. In any case, including NST in science classes also requires in-service teacher training and new resources for materials and equipment.Some of the identified barriers for teaching NST may be circumvented by out-of-school methods. This dissertation suggests research-based models for the development of two specific learning environments: exhibitions in science museums and school group visits to industrial sites. The models strive to bridge the notorious gap between academic research and the development of educational practice. Their applications to NST education are discussed. Furthermore, some methodological issues are raised because this research also explored the potential of the Model of Educational Reconstruction in informal and out-of-school contexts. Nanoscience education for scientific litera...