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Gender disparities in STEM fields have been under extensive study, the focus of which has been on future career aspirations. However, the primary phases in gender differences are still ambiguous when examined from this perspective, possibly due to the fact that most of the studies have targeted samples of upper secondary school or college students. As such, in this study we examined the transient period to lower secondary school; our aim was to discover to what extent relationships between factors of students' science interest and career perspectives differ between male and female. Based on previous studies and analyses, we selected three future career perspective variablesoutcome, personal time, and innovation orientationsand three defining features of interestpersonal value, enjoyment, and cognitive aspect. The sample was conducted in Finland and comprised of 401 grade 7 students aged 13, using a multi-group structural equation modelling. This study found that during the transient period there were clear gender differences regarding interest and preferences of science subjects, as well as their relationship towards future career perspectives. To be specific, biology was preferred by females, and males preferred physics and chemistry. With regard to future career perspectives, female students' science interest was positively correlated with personal time-and innovation-oriented career perspectives; an outcome-oriented career expectation was negatively related to their interest. Interpretation and implication that might possibly arise from the results were also discussed.

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According to previous theories and studies, interest and self-concept at an early age have played a pivotal role in occupational choices, especially in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. However, a causal relationship between interest, self-concept, and aspirations in science is still under debate. In addition, few studies have focused on gender differences in these relationships. Therefore, this study aimed to explore the relationships between interest and selfconcept in predicting science aspirations between ages 13 and 16 at lower-secondary school, considering gender differences. For the analyses, we conducted cross-lagged modeling and multigroup structural equation modeling in order to examine interrelationships between interest, selfconcept, and science aspirations. According to the results, students' self-concept was high and stable, while interest was low but increased significantly during the lower-secondary school phases. However, there were no reciprocal relationships between interest and self-concept in predicting students' science aspirations. Interestingly, while girls' interest was indicated as a sound predictor of aspirations in science, girls' self-concept had no predictive influence on aspirations. Possible interpretations and implications of the study for lower-secondary science education are discussed.

A 44-item questionnaire was created to examine pre-service teachers' knowledge and perceptions of the impact of mitigative climate change actions and how willing they are to undertake these actions. Responses (N = 224) were collected from pre-service teachers at the University of Eastern Finland. The findings show that pre-service teachers have a very low level of knowledge of the impact of different mitigative climate change actions. Furthermore, the students tend to overestimate the carbon footprint of low-impact actions and underestimate the carbon footprint of high-impact actions and they are unable to make a clear distinction between low-and high-impact actions, though the impact of the high-impact actions may be many times greater than those of low-impact actions. In general, pre-service teachers were willing to take low-impact actions, somewhat willing to take mid-impact actions, but reluctant to take the highest-impact actions. Knowledge of the impact of actions did not correlate with willingness to act, possibly due to low levels of knowledge. Some correlation between confidence in knowledge and willingness to act was found. This article discusses the importance of considering confidence in knowledge in future research examining the relationship between knowledge and action. The implications of the findings on teacher education and environmental education are also discussed. Keywords Climate change education. Climate change mitigation. Climate change knowledge. Pro-environmental behavior. Willingness to act. Confidence in knowledge. Carbon footprint

Context-based learning (CBL) approaches have been recommended and expanded in science education to make science more relevant to students by connecting science content with students' daily life. Subsequently, in order to implement CBL at school, a group of scenarios has been produced by several stakeholders. However, there is a lack of resources to measure effectively what makes a good scenario. Thus, this study aims to develop and validate a scenario evaluation instrument to examine students' perspectives on science career-related scenarios through the lens of relevance and interest. For this purpose, 25 science career-related scenarios and a measurement tool, Scenario Evaluation with Relevance and Interest (SERI), were developed by a team of researchers for the EU funded MultiCO project. Then, lower secondary school students from three different countries, Estonia, Finland, and the UK, were asked to respond to the newly developed instrument after reading the scenarios, and their responses were analyzed by factor analyses and multivariate analysis of variance. According to the result, this instrument has good construct validity and reliability. However, it indicates one issue of discriminant validity between two factors, individual dimension and societal dimension. Also, significant gender differences were found in the Estonian sample regarding students' perspectives on the scenarios. Possible interpretations of the results and implications of the suggested measurement tool are discussed.

Recent international comparison studies such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) repeatedly argued that inquiry-based learning (IBL) indicated a negative effect on science literacy (SL). However, those studies included two limitations in revealing the relationship between IBL and SL as they did not consider (1) instructional quality and (2) different types of IBL. Accordingly, this study aimed to explore relationships between two types of IBL (open and guided) and SL, and how four types of instructional quality (classroom management, adaptative teaching, teacher–student relationship, and teacher support) moderated the relationships between IBL and SL. For this purpose, a PISA 2015 Finnish sample was used and analyzed by latent moderated structural equation modeling in order to explore the latent interaction between IBL and the quality of instruction. The results of this study presented that the teacher–student relationship was the most potent predictor of SL and moderated the effects of guided and open inquiry on SL. Classroom management also indicated moderation effects for both guided and open inquiry. Also, this study showed the overruling effect of open inquiry on guided inquiry in predicting SL.