Vad ska elever lära sig angående naturvetenskaplig verksamhet? - En analys av svenska läroplaner för grundskolan under 50 år. "What should students learn about scientific inquiry? A comparative study of 50 years of the Swedish national curricula."

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to contribute to an understanding of which changes related to scientific inquiry have been made historically in curriculum documents. A comparative analysis is made of five Swedish national curricula– Lgr 62, Lgr 69, Lgr 80, Lpo 94 and Lgr 11 – during the last 50 years regarding what compulsory school students (school years 1–9) should learn about scientific inquiry. It focuses 1) what students should learn about carrying out scientific inquiries, and 2) what students should learn about the nature of science. All of the curricula examined have aims concerning scientific inquiry. The results show that during the period there have been many shifts in emphasis and changes of aims, for example from learning an inductive method to a more deductive one, and from an emphasis on carrying out investigations to an emphasis on more conceptual understanding of scientific investigations. Because teaching traditions tend to conserve aspects of earlier curricula, it is discussed how the results can help teachers, teacher students and curriculum developers to better see the consequences of the changes for teaching and learning.

Undervisningstraditioner i naturvetenskaplig undervisning i relation till svenska utbildningsreformer i skolår 6 <br/> Teaching traditions in Science Education in compulsory school and its relation to educational reform in Science Education in year 6

“…Det har tidigare visats att det i Sverige finns en stark tradition av att betona laborativt arbete (exv. Johansson & Wickman, 2012;Lunde, Rundqvist & Rundqvist 2015). Johansson och Wickman (2013) har studerat selektiva traditioner inom det undersökande arbetssättet bland lärare i tidigare skolår och visat att det inom detta arbetssätt finns fyra olika selektiva traditioner med avseende på betonade kvaliteter.…”

The mangle of school science practice: Teachers’ negotiations of two nature of science activities at different levels of contextualization

“…NOS is included in the current Swedish national curriculum (Swedish National Agency for Education, ), and it has been so in former versions for the past few decades (Johansson & Wickman, ). Different NOS aspects are referred to both implicitly and explicitly in the curriculum (Swedish National Agency for Education, ), and the intention to make NOS part of science teaching is strengthened by an official commentary on the curriculum (Swedish National Agency for Education, ).…”

Science, Coloniality, and “the Great Rationality Divide”

“…The main data consist of science textbooks used in the Swedish secondary school, because it is at this level that one expects a more complex teaching of the history of science. Furthermore, it is here that colonialism is introduced in the subject of history, in accordance with stipulations in the Swedish curricula (Johansson and Wickman 2012;Leden 2017). I have analyzed ten textbooks from the subjects of biology, physics, chemistry, and Bnatural sciences^(a school subject for non-science programs in upper secondary school).…”