Conference Agenda

We will present findings from a project exploring how biology education in secondary schools can enhance students' learning and action competence regarding antibiotic resistance (henceforth ABR). ABR has been described as one of the most pressing global health challenges of our time, with far-reaching consequences for individuals, communities, and the healthcare systems (e.g., Littman et al., 2020). Educating young people about this issue is crucial because it equips the next generation with the tools to understand, and be an active agent in preventing this growing crisis (WHO, 2015). Researchers within ESE emphasize that school has a great opportunity to foster students to become action competent (Chen and Liu, 2020; Varela-Losada, et al., 2016). Action competence is more than acquiring knowledge or changing individual behaviors. It involves developing the capacity to engage critically and collectively with sustainability issues (Jensen & Schnack, 2006; Mogensen & Schnack, 2010).

While action competence describes a capacity to act, what we can observe in a classroom is what students actually say and do. That is why will address the practical foundation for taking action, that is, the action-oriented knowledge (Jensen 2002, 2004; Van Poeck et al., 2023) that students in this study use in a case study on an authentic sustainability issue in the area of ABR. By letting students have the opportunity to have critical encounters and participate in deliberative conversations about an authentic situation, and to practice the ability to make thoughtful, conscious choice, we have the ambition to contribute to teaching and learning where both the knowledge and values of ABR are put into practice.

The purpose of the study is to explore how upper secondary school students express their understanding of antibiotic use and resistance, and how these expressions can be interpreted in terms of action-oriented knowledge. Specifically, we investigate what kinds of action-oriented knowledge emerge in students’ group discussions when they engage with an authentic case of antibiotic resistance.

We build on John Dewey’s transactional approach (Dewey, 1938/1997), where learning is here understood as a process that takes place when a person acts in and interacts with a social and physical environment (Dewey & Bentley, 1949). To make something intelligible, it is necessary for the individual to create relationships between what they already know and what they face in the learning environment. Learning something new is thus a relational process (Biesta & Burbules, 2003; Garrison, 2001). The concept ‘privileging’ is used as a way to make visible that participants in learning processes value certain issues, physical objects, actions, etc. as more reasonable and fruitful than others (Wertsch, 1993). The privileging leads the learning process in certain directions and towards certain learning content.

When it comes to studying the learning of action competence, Jensen (2002) distinguishes between four different dimensions of action-oriented knowledge that can define the overall knowledge needed to become action competent, that is knowledge about; the nature of the problem and its effects, about root causes, about strategies for change and about alternatives and visions. The first two types of knowledge describe the fundamental subject knowledge needed to be able to connect to the questions of what is the problem and why do we have it. The last two dimensions are characterized by being change-oriented and concerns where do we want to go and how can changes be made. Furthermore, Jensen (2002) considers actions as both direct and indirect and points out that an action-oriented teaching has to embrace both. Moreover, the strategies for action might concern individual actions or collective actions or both.

A central aspect of science education for citizenship is to support students in becoming scientifically literate citizens who are capable of critically examining and discussing science-related claims encountered in the media. Such critical examination does not only involve assessing whether scientific information is true or false, but also includes scrutinizing scientific processes, evaluating the relevance and limitations of information, recognizing the tentative nature of scientific knowledge, and distinguishing between scientific and non-scientific issues (Bromme & Goldman, 2014). In contemporary science education teachers face the challenge of addressing these forms of critical examination in ways that balance the teaching of established science content with the promotion of students’ autonomy and active engagement in critical examination.

Osborne and Allchin (2024) argue that science education should aim to educate ‘competent outsiders’ meaning citizens who are not specialists but are nevertheless able to evaluate scientific claims and participate meaningfully in societal discussions about science. This involves developing students’ understanding of: the social practices of science and the institutional structures that enable scientists to produce reliable knowledge, the nature and potential pitfalls of mediated communication, major scientific explanatory theories of the natural world, and appreciation of the empirical basis of science and of the diversity of modes of reasoning used to warrant the claims advanced by science.

This study focuses on the teaching of the school subject Science Studies (Naturkunskap) in Swedish upper-secondary school for students enrolled in programs not specializing in science. Science Studies has as a main aim to support students’ participation in discussions about science-related issues as non-experts. Thus, the focus of this study is to develop teaching and didactic principles for teaching supporting the development of students’ capabilities for critical examination of science in news media, social media, and other public sources.

Theoretically the study is grounded in previous research on teaching critical examination and different aspects of learning related to science in the media and the application of concepts of the Nature of Science (NOS). Wiblom et al. (2019) show that while tools for critical examination can enable more elaborate reasoning, they may also constrain and delimit the scope of students’ critique. In addition to research on teaching critical examination through socioscientific issues or historical cases, prior studies have also examined critical examination in encounters with media. For example, Solli (2019) argues that further research is needed to understand how scientific controversies can be used in science education to support students in navigating the diversity and complexity of how such issues are represented in media. In sum, previous research points to a need for teaching designs that support students’ engagement with uncertainty, disagreement, and the credibility of mediated scientific knowledge.

To strengthen students’ critical examination capabilities, this study draws on NOS as an analytical and pedagogical resource. Previous research on NOS has proposed key-aspects that are of importance for making sense of processes of scientific knowledge production. Lederman’s (2007) “Consensus Model” highlights central NOS aspects such as the tentative, empirical, and creative nature of science. Erduran and Dagher’s (2014) “Family Resemblance Model” expands this perspective by including social and institutional dimensions of scientific practices. A common conclusion from research on students’ learning of NOS is that students need to be provided with a variety of contexts in which they can apply NOS-related concepts (e.g. Allchin, 2011).

Aim and research question

The aim of this study is to develop didactical principles of teaching that supports students’ capabilities for critical examination of science issues in the media, where NOS serves as a central conceptual tool.

RQ1: How can teaching practices be designed to support critical examination of science-related issues in the media?

Over the last two decades, international reforms in science education have pivoted toward a fundamental goal: students should not merely memorize scientific concepts but must grasp how scientific knowledge is produced, justified, and revised over time (NRC, 2012; OECD, 2018). This shift has positioned epistemological beliefs—the metacognitive structures concerning the source, certainty, and justification of knowledge—as a cornerstone of science education. These beliefs directly dictate how students approach learning, navigate scientific reasoning, and make sense of socio-scientific issues (Hofer & Pintrich, 1997; Conley et al., 2004).

The importance of epistemological beliefs becomes particularly evident in the context of socioscientific issues (SSI). SSI such as pandemics, climate change, and vaccination involve uncertainty, conflicting evidence, and diverse expert perspectives, requiring students to conceptualise scientific knowledge not as a set of absolute truths but as evidence-based and open to change (Sadler, 2004; Zeidler & Nichols, 2009). However, studies conducted in both European and non-European contexts indicate that many students and teachers continue to perceive science as a body of fixed, authority-based knowledge (Lederman, 2007; Sinatra & Chinn, 2012). Such views limit students’ engagement with SSI and constrain their participation in scientific argumentation processes.

In response to this challenge, modelling-based instruction has emerged as a powerful pedagogical approach for supporting epistemological development. Modelling involves a cyclical process in which students construct models to explain phenomena, make predictions, test evidence, and revise models when necessary (Schwarz et al., 2009). In particular, multiple modelling approaches allow the same phenomenon to be explored through different types of models (e.g., mechanistic, system-based, and mathematical), thereby supporting students’ understanding that scientific knowledge does not have a single, absolute representation (Acher et al., 2007; Clement, 2008).

Although numerous studies have examined the effects of modelling-based instruction on conceptual learning and scientific practices, research investigating the impact of multiple modelling on epistemological beliefs within a socioscientific and comparative framework remains limited. The COVID-19 pandemic provides a global SSI context in which scientific knowledge has been rapidly produced, revised, and publicly debated, highlighting epistemic challenges that are shared not only at the national level but also across European education systems.

The aim of this study is to examine the effects of socioscientific issue instruction enriched with multiple modelling activities in the context of COVID-19 on high school students’ epistemological beliefs and to compare these effects with those of argumentation-based instruction and traditional teaching approaches. The study seeks to generate pedagogical implications that are applicable across different European educational contexts.

The study addresses the following research questions:

1. Are there significant differences in epistemological beliefs among students participating in SSI instruction enriched with multiple modelling, argumentation-based SSI instruction, and traditional instruction?
2. Do these instructional approaches have differential effects on the sub-dimensions of epistemological beliefs?
3. What are students’ perceptions of the SSI instruction process enriched with multiple modelling practices?

Algorithmics has evolved from a science of calculation into a core practice in Computer Science Education (CSE), where algorithms are treated not as fixed procedures but as a living activity of inventing, formalising, testing and optimising solutions (e.g. Lagrange, 2014).

This perspective situates our work within the didactics of algorithmics by drawing on CSE research that distinguishes epistemic difficulties, linked to core conceptual demands (Åkerfeldt et al., 2024), from contextual or contingent difficulties that arise in situated practice (Tšhukudu et al., 2021). Within this frame, Nijenhuis-Voogt et al. (2023) show that teaching algorithms involves continuously balancing these two dimensions: on the one hand, targeting epistemic difficulties through tools such as pseudocode, which helps foreground and stabilise key ideas of algorithmic thinking (Futschek, 2006); on the other, taking seriously the contingent obstacles that appear when learners try to apply these concepts in concrete tasks, environments and artefacts.

We investigate how innovative teaching sequences can sustain a genuine “algorithmic inquiry” in first‑year upper‑secondary computer science class, aligned with the international K‑12 Computer Science framing (K 12 Computer Science Framework Steering Committee, 2016). Following Eberbach & Hmelo-Silver (2015), we hypothesise that an inquiry approach in didactics is more effective than traditional teaching, as it allows you to get closer to the practices of experts.

The research addresses a central question: how can algorithmics be taught and learnt through an inquiry approach? This overarching research question unfolds through interrelated sub‑questions.

(1) Which algorithms should be chosen to support the inquiry? (2) How can classroom practices be designed to allow students to experience the key necessities of algorithmic practice? (3) What external representations (Goldin, 2020) of algorithms (i.e. visible, material forms in which an algorithm is shown to students, as opposed to mental images) best support the inquiry process?

Our research unfolds within Joint Action Theory in Didactics (JATD; Sensevy, 2019). JATD can be understood through three fundamental theoretical hypotheses: (1) primacy of the grammar of action; (2) joint nature of didactic action ; and (3) immanence of knowledge to practices. According to this last hypothesis, it is the practices themselves that have shaped the knowledge giving them meaning. The aim, therefore, is to understand how didactic practices can “bring back to life” the meaning of knowledge immanent to cultural practices. To do this, JATD theorises the unfolding of learning and teaching situations as an interplay between the didactic contract and the didactic milieu. The didactic contract refers to the system of implicit rules and mutual expectations that structure the distribution of responsibilities between teacher and students with respect to the taught knowledge (Brousseau, Sarrazy, & Novotná, 2014).The didactic milieu designates the material and symbolic environment intentionally designed by the teacher, within which students’ activity can lead to new knowledge (Sensevy, 2015).

The aim is therefore to understand how the interplay between the didactic contract and the didactic environment can enable students to experience continuity and kinship between didactic practices and expert practices with the knowledge at stake (Santini et al., 2018). Following Sensevy and Le Hénaff (2025), we consider that this epistemic kinship is based, at least in part, on the work of exemplars (Kuhn, 1977) that crystallise the core of the practices with the knowledge at stake.

Under this description we reformulate the subquestions as follows:

(1) What kind of didactic milieu, or succession of didactic milieus, can support an inquiry that allows students to grasp an epistemic kinship with algorithmics?

(2) What are the most favourable exemplars for developing an inquiry-based didactics in CSE?