In our research project, a collaboration has been formed between upper-secondary school teachers in the chemistry and technology subjects at Stjerneskolan, researchers in science and technology education at Karlstad University, and Circlab, an industrial testbed for sustainable additive manufacturing, by 3D printing of composites from thermoplastics, bio-based and recycled materials.

The facilities at Circlab are available on a continuous basis for participating teachers and pupils. This includes access to up-to-date equipment for CAD modelling, 3D printing, 3D printable materials (composites) and mechanical testing of artefacts­.

In this way, the testbed provides opportunities for increased authenticity in the teaching of the design process, with connections to the demands of present customers, and involvement in construction of prototypes and finished products.

The present study is conducted as a design research study in teaching of technology at the upper-secondary technology programme, in which teaching sequences are developed, tested, and evaluated through rounds of iterations.

Video observation of pupils’ interaction with the resources at the testbed and amongst themselves, and group interviews with pupils about their experiences will be conducted.

The action research will be conducted as two modules.

In the first module, pupils will be introduced to 3D scanning of objects and 3D printing of models of the objects in different materials.

In the second, more advanced module, pupils will draw a standard object in CAD, a “dogbone”, 3D print it in different materials and along different printing directions, and make a tensile test of its material properties.

As a planned outcome of the study, teaching sequences will be developed and tested, in which pupils gain insight into the design process, composite material properties, and some considerations of sustainability, by access to up-to-date equipment at an industrial testbed.

At the organisational level, implications will be drawn with regard to experiences of a collaboration between a school, an industry, and academia.

Introducing climate change education into the science curricula and the classroom requires science teacher education to prepare preservice science teachers to navigate political, ethical, and emotional dimensions. This study investigates Swedish preservice science teachers’ beliefs about teaching climate change, revealing tensions between traditional science teaching and climate change education. Using semi-structured interviews with six preservice science teachers from a Swedish university, we identified beliefs about teaching approaches, content, students, self, teaching strategies, and context relating to teaching climate change. Three tensions emerged between the preservice teachers’ held beliefs: (1) dealing with values in balancing teacher neutrality and passion for the topic, (2) dealing with emotions in giving students an understanding of the severity of climate change while managing negative impacts on students’ emotional wellbeing, and (3) aligning a view of climate change as an anthropocentric issue and a traditional focus on scientific concepts in science education. These findings indicate the need to develop science teacher education to address these tensions, as introducing climate change education into the science curricula requires navigating political, ethical, and emotional dimensions, diverging from traditional science teaching focused on facts and concepts. Finally, we offer recommendations for teacher education programmes. 

Science education on climate change typically focuses on the greenhouse effect as a physical phenomenon and how students can contribute to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. However, students also need to understand how climate change influences the local risk of natural hazards, and how society can adapt to such risk. 150 grade 8-9 pupils were invited to an out-of-school event at Karlstad University in Sweden on the topic of local risk of flooding. Video data have been recorded of pupils’ interaction with one of the activities, Riskville. The data analysis focuses on how one group of pupils expressed competence in relation to flooding as a natural hazard, which is contrasted with other groups that engaged with the activity to a lesser extent. The results show that the pupils who expressed competence could identify locations that are vulnerable to flooding, express empathy with affected people, and come up with suitable ways to prevent flooding or deal with the consequences of flooding. The less engaged pupils built towers of building blocks as a protest against the task. The study demonstrates that a competence-oriented approach can contribute to a more holistic understanding of climate change by connecting to students’ personal experiences and local contexts.

There is a need for pupils to develop competence, in the form of knowledge, skills, and attitudes, in relation to environmental risks in society. Awareness of local vulnerable locations and how they can be protected in urban planning are relevant topics for integrative teaching in geography, science, and technology education.

In the present study, 150 grade 8 and 9 pupils participated during a day of out-of-school activities on the theme of climate-related risks with a focus on local risk of flooding.

The activities are designed to give pupils experience of and insight into technological solutions to pressing environmental challenges at the societal level.

During the Floodwalk, pupils walked along the riverside of Karlstad, their home city, and were made aware of locations that are particularly vulnerable to flooding, such as buildings close to the water and viaducts, and how the risk of flooding is addressed through adaptive measures in urban planning, such as building bicycle paths on banks along the river and canals.

In the game Riskville, a model of a city built with wooden blocks on a felt carpet, pupils were confronted with flooding scenarios, instructed to show on the carpet the consequences of such scenarios, and discuss how they could be addressed or prevented in urban planning.

Video data of pupils’ interaction with Riskville have been collected and six pupils have been interviewed about their view on climate change and experiences of their participation in the out-of-school activities.

The data have been analysed from the perspective of pupils’ expression of competence with regard to natural hazards and disaster risk reduction by means of adaptations in urban planning.

The results show that the pupils appreciated the opportunity to learn about local risks of flooding, and were able to identify critical infrastructure that may be flooded or made inaccessible in flooding scenarios, and come up with suitable preventive measures.

The activities contribute to central learning goals in technology education, with a focus on local, authentic technological solutions to societal, environmental challenges.

Digital visualisation tools hold strong potential for supporting physics teaching, yet little is known about how early-stage preservice teachers begin to integrate such tools in authentic planning tasks. This qualitative single-case study examines how one pair of first-semester preservice physics teachers worked with GeoGebra while planning a lesson on motion on an inclined plane. The participants were enrolled in the introductory physics course with a didactic focus on the upper-secondary teacher programme during the autumn semesters of 2023 and 2024. Video recordings from a workshop were analysed using a theory-informed qualitative content analysis grounded in the technology-related TPACK domains (TCK, TPK, TPACK). The case showed how the participants demonstrated emerging Technological Content Knowledge when they interpret and modify vector representations, Technological Pedagogical Knowledge when they reason about static and dynamic visualisations for instruction, and Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge when they structure simulations to support conceptual understanding in mechanics. The analysis also revealed moments of uncertainty, including ambiguous interpretation of unlabelled or overlapping vectors. While based on a limited empirical scope, the case provides nuanced insight into how preservice physics teachers begin to develop integrated, technology-supported reasoning during early physics teacher education.

In a technology course at the primary school teacher programme at Linnaeus University, preservice primary school teachers take part of a group project where they design a technical system.

One ambition with the project is for students to work hands on with the design process. Another ambition is to introduce programming in the context of technical solutions to challenges in society, in line with the technology syllabus for compulsory school in Sweden.

Different cohorts of preservice teachers have had different assignments, such as the design of a greenhouse, where the temperature is measured and regulated with a thermostat and the opening and closing of a window.

The present study focuses on preservice teachers’ assignment to design a model of a food truck. Originally, the task was based on the absence of food trucks on the university campus, which adds authenticity to the task, called for in technology education. Students were asked to conduct a market analysis to explore what a hypothetical food truck could offer and where it should be placed.

The food truck assignment included drawing in Tinkercad, programming of functions using microbit, e.g. a queue system, construction of a physical model of the food truck, and peer presentations.

The aim of the study is to develop empirically grounded knowledge about preservice teachers’ experiences of carrying out a task in technology education in which they design a technical system, and how well prepared they feel to teach the subject of technology with a focus on the design process and programming.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven (N = 7) primary school preservice teachers, after their participation in the project with the food truck.

Early analysis reveals that the interviewed preservice teachers took different roles in their study groups. Roles included responsibility for overall design of the food trucks, the digital tools, and aesthetic appearance of the food trucks.

In this study, we report on the outcome of implementing conceptual hands-on activities in a Swedish introductory university mechanics course. The purpose of the activities was to ground the central concepts in the course in students’ shared, embodied experiences of physical phenomena. A total of 112 students, consisting of 105 engineering students and 7 teacher students, were enrolled in the same course. Randomly assembled groups of 3–4 students were video recorded as they undertook four different practical activities. Our analysis mainly focused on two groups of students’ embodied engagement with two of the four activities, consisting of lifting a weight with and without a system of pulleys, and finding the centre of mass using a metre stick. This is contrasted with the activity of standing on a bathroom scale as a lift goes up and down, where the embodied engagement of one of the groups was quite limited. A student interview and course evaluation reports were also analysed to evaluate the implementation of the hands-on activities from a student perspective. The results show that the participating students’ embodied experience, acquired from the conceptual hands-on activities, became an important asset as they tried to explain and link observations of the studied phenomena to their theoretical understanding. The students combined gestures, mimicking the practical procedure, and spoken language, to make their explanations more convincing for both themselves and peers. The intuitive nature and simplicity of the activities invited students to focus on the actual core of the task. In the interview, students emphasised the importance of the actual embodied feeling of the experienced phenomena, and that the activities made them notice other related physics aspects, making them go beyond their initial thoughts. 

Digital technology has become a natural part of our life. Children in Swedish preschool are no exception. Digital tools are widely used in Swedish STEM education, from preschool to higher education. The Swedish preschool curriculum brings forth the technology subject as an important area and children should be given the opportunity to explore technology they encounter in everyday life. In preschool education, digital tools are primarily used as a teaching tool, but few studies have focused on young children’s ability to understand digital tools from a technology perspective. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate preschool children’s ability to interpret and use the affordances of a previously unknown digital tool, an infrared camera. Two planned teaching activities with eight children, 5-6 years old, were video observed in their preschool. The results show that the digital design of the infrared camera is functional for the children. Early in the activity, they express understanding of how different colours represent different temperatures. In addition, their previous experiences with touch screens and the mobility of the infrared camera enable them to explore its affordance independently. The study identifies a three-step process in the children’s exploration: The children first explore the artefact, showing strong interest in its affordances and functionalities, engaging with it as producers of images, and deleting and navigating among images. Second, they use the camera to investigate heat as a physical phenomenon, designing their own inquiries. Finally, the digital functions spur the children’s imagination, and they involve the infrared camera in play, combining investigative and imaginative activities, such using the infrared camera as a spy camera. In conclusion, the children show considerable digital competence in relation to a previously unknown digital tool.

Due to the far-reaching and life-threatening consequences of climate change, science education is becoming increasingly important for preparing students to become climate literate citizens. Climate literacy, which encompasses knowledge, skills, and attitudes related to climate change, can provide a strong foundation for informed climate action. While the influence of students' climate change-related knowledge on their engagement in climate action has been the focus of much research and debate, few studies in the field of science education have examined how the combination of cognitive and psycho-social aspects of climate literacy relates to students' climate engagement. The present study addresses this gap by exploring the relative contribution of different aspects of climate literacy (i.e., knowledge, skills, risk perception, and value orientations) to students' willingness to engage in climate action. Using the method of sequential regression analysis, we analyzed data collected from 1309 German and Swedish students. The patterns of the results in both countries are similar: Students' risk perception is found to be the relatively strongest predictor of their willingness to engage in climate action. Value orientations were also identified as strong predictors, while cognitive factors seem to have less explanatory power. Conclusively, our study suggests that science education should consider psycho-social factors alongside teaching of the necessary knowledge, especially if we aim to empower students to go beyond the theoretical discussion of how to combat climate change.

An action research study on the topic of climate change education was conducted in collaboration between science and social science education researchers and teachers at three lower secondary schools. After joint literature seminars, teachers planned and conducted teaching sequences on climate change, including an out-of-school visit to the collaborating university with a focus on increased local risk of flooding due to climate change. Interviews with students at the end of the study revealed that they appreciated the teaching sequence, tried to lead their personal lives in a climate-friendly way, but were not very engaged emotionally in climate change as an issue. Meeting notes and interviews with teachers show that science teachers prioritized teaching climate change as a physical phenomenon, but social science teachers expressed frustration with students’ lack of emotional engagement and a perceived disconnect between students’ knowledge of climate change and choices in their personal lives. Challenges in conducting action research in a situation with different objectives across the initiating municipality, and participating researchers, teachers, and students are discussed.