Students’ participation in the realization of school science activities

Abstract

This thesis investigates and considers how students and teachers realize school science activities. Students' questions and accounts of their experiences as they become part of an established science content form the focus of this work. Its purpose is to provide an understanding of how two agendas -one, based on students' participation and the other, based on the already established science content -are orchestrated so that both are accounted for. The empirical work is based on video-recorded observations in science classrooms. The findings show how different activities in the accomplishment of a school science project orchestrate students' questions and accounts of experiences with the science content. The findings also show how the nature of science (NOS) is communicated as a by-product of instruction. In addition, different uses of questions for bridging science and everyday ways of communicating are shown in the results. The findings also indicate the different roles that students' experiences acquire in a school science activity. These results should be seen as a step towards a definition of the nature of school science (NOSS). School science activities become intelligible if we consider them from a basis of their own purposes and prerequisites. The concept of NOSS is described to elicit such purposes and prerequisites as they become apparent in the activity.

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