The theoretical framework student ownership of learning is developed both theoretically and with qualitative research. The metaphor Bownership^is related to the process towards meaning making and understanding and is seen as relevant especially to improve physics instruction. The dimension group ownership of learning refers to the groups_ actions of choice and control of the management of the task; how the task is determined, performed and finally reported. The other dimension, the individual student ownership of learning, refers to an individual student_s own question/idea that comes from own experiences, interests or anomalies of understanding; an idea/question that comes back several times and leads to new insights. From literature and from our own data, we have developed categories for group and individual student ownership of learning, which were iteratively sharpened in order to identify ownership in the two dimensions. As a consequence, we argue for use of the framework student ownership of learning as a way to identify an optimal level of ownership for better learning and higher motivation in physics teaching.

The present paper takes its point of departure in risk being a relevant content for science education, and that there are many different approaches to how to incorporate it. By reviewing the academic literature on the use and definitions of risk from fields such as engineering, linguistics and philosophy, we identified key elements of the risk concept relevant for science education. Risk is a phenomenon of the future that may be conveyed by our activity, it is something that may or may not take place. Hence, at the core of risk we find uncertainty and consequence. Furthermore, the elements of probability and severity are relevant modifiers of the consequence, as well as both subject to uncertainty. Additionally, in framing, understanding and decisionmaking on risk, as individuals or society, we need to acknowledge that risk has both objective and subjective components, lying in the interface between knowledge and values. In this paper, we describe how these key elements were derived from the literature and derive a schematic model of the risk concept for the purpose of science education. We further discuss how this model may assist in planning, execution and evaluation of teaching activities explicitly or implicitly involving risk issues. ARTICLE HISTORY

The thesis reports case studies of students working with context rich problems (CRP) and mini projects (MP) in physics in an upper secondary school class and in a physics teacher education class at university. The students report a big shift from physics in secondary school as fun and easy, to physics in upper secondary school as boring, difficult and with lack of time for reflections and physics talking, but they also found physics as interesting in itself. In order to study how group discussions in physics influence the students' learning and to study the phenomena of students' ownership of learning (SOL) we introduced CRP and MP. We video recorded five groups with 14 teacher students at university in the end of 2002, and five groups with 15 students at upper secondary school during the beginning of their second physics course in the spring term in 2003. MP and CRP in physics were used as instructional settings in order to give students possibility to strengthen their contextual understanding and their possibilities to ownership. When students get the opportunity to manage their own learning and studying by open-ended tasks in physics, without the teacher determining all details of the performance, this gives more ownership of learning. The advantage of MPs and CRPs from the student's point of view is more freedom to act, think and discuss, and from the teacher's view, to get insights of the students' ability and how they really think in physics. The ownership is found to be crucial for motivation and development of competence.

This study provides analyses of the conversations when university students work in small groups solving context-rich physics problems. We constructed context-rich, open-ended physics problems related to everyday life situations that lack some information required to solve and complete the tasks. The students' ownership of learning, their actions of choice and control, was analyzed in two dimensions: group and individual. Conversation analyses and flowcharts of the conversation were constructed from the complete transcripts of three groups. The theoretical framework for student ownership of learning demonstrated that it was possible to show that even if students have group ownership of the task, the individual student ownership of learning is not selfevident. The study also demonstrates the methodological power and value of the flowchart to identify conversation patterns in the groups that were effective in the search for exploratory talks and individual questions. We discuss implications for teacher development to enhance group work.

How do students bridge everyday life views into physics understanding? We report from in-depth analysis of one group of four students, video-recorded over 135 min solving a context rich problem (CRP). Through transcripts of the group's conversations and from flow-charts made of the group talk we have categorised how students' experiences develop into physics reasoning. The conversations in the cooperative group are sometimes carried out by "exploratory talks", but there are also parts of the conversation where the students develop their own thoughts without response from the others. Some evidence is given of: 1) how the students use exploratory talks to reach consensus about the boundary conditions of the task; 2) how the students state the problem more precisely by starting to talk about experiences they have had and to use their experiences as arguments, and 3) how individual questions are formulated in a process of meaning making. We find in this casestudy that students' personal everyday life experience develops into physics reasoning during group talk. We argue accordingly for more time in the physics classroom to solve open ended physics problems which promote group discussions taking departure from own experiences and enhance physics understanding.