Three research projects granted

We are happy to announce that the Department of Teaching and Learning got three research projects granted at the beginning of November. The purpose of the grants is to support innovative and ground-breaking research ideas in educational science.

John Airey, Maria Andrée and Eleanor Armstrong.
From left: John Airey, Maria Andrée and Eleanor Armstrong. Photo: Rickard Kilström, Eva Dalin and privat.

Maria Andrée has been granted money from the Swedish Institute for Educational Research, and John Airey and Eleanor Armstrong have been granted money from the Swedish Research Council. Besides this Kristina Danielsson has been granted funds, mainly as scientific support, within a project where Linnaeus University has received funds from the Swedish Research Council for the project Subject literacy in primary teacher education.

Stockholm University is the university that overall received the most research funding in educational science in this year's call from the Swedish Research Council – just over SEK 43 million. And from the Swedish Institute for Educational Research, SU got two out of eight grants.

Congratulations to you all!

 

Read about the projects

 

John Airey
John Airey- Photo: Rickard Killström.

John Airey

Project period: VT 2023 – VT 2027
Granted funds: 4,7 miljoner SEK

Brief about the project

– In this project we investigate two areas that are known to cause problems for undergraduate students, namely electromagnetic fields and chemical bonding. We begin by auditing the range of representations made available to students in the two areas through their textbooks. Thereafter we interview lecturers about the disciplinary function of these representations. We then video undergraduate lectures, using parts of the video to interview students in a process of stimulated recall to ascertain what aspects of representations students fail to notice or misinterpret.

Special expectations

– We expect that our work will lead to a theoretical proposal about the relationship between disciplinary knowledge and its representation and an empirical proposal about how such problems may be addressed.

– In the final part of the project we try out our empirical proposal in two undergraduate courses.

– I work with two researchers from Linneaus University and we also have a group of international experts in the field who have volunteered to help us in our work.

 

Maria Andrée
Maria Andrée. Foto: privat

Maria Andrée

  • Project period: VT 2023 – VT 2026
  • Granted funds: 4,5 miljoner SEK

Brief about the project

– This project focuses on the role science education can have in preparing students to participate in a democratic society. More specifically, the project is about how the high school science subject can develop students' abilities to critically examine social issues related to science. A challenge for teachers today is that the tools available for source criticism are general and not adapted to the need for critical examination of issues related to natural science.

– In today's society, we often encounter claims about natural science and natural scientific processes in the media. This became particularly clear during the Covid-19 pandemic, when processes for scientific knowledge were presented and discussed in the media.

– An important dimension of critical examination of social issues related to natural science is that it is not just about determining whether a statement is true or false. It is also important to be able to understand and critically examine how the scientific process is carried out that led to the research result.

Special expectations

– I look forward to learn how high school students reason about science. The students who study science in high school are students who have opted out of science and technology as majors.

–    The project group want to find out is what is required for these students to see scientific knowledge as relevant and how the teaching of natural science should strengthen their ability for critical examination.

 

Eleanor Armstrong
Eleanor Armstrong- Photo: PRivat.

Eleanor Armstrong

  • Project period: 1 januari – 31 december 2023
  • Granted funds: 200 000 SEK

Brief about the project

– Our workshop “Overview Affect” aims to open up care, repair, and maintenance as research themes within space science education, and space science educational research. Existing research does not sufficiently consider how these skills underpin the durational work in space science and thus leaves them out of education.

– Existing research and practice also underrepresents the networks and infrastructure that keep space science, its technologies, and people in space alive and in operation.

– The education community has yet to develop an understanding of how to engage such themes and narratives in space science and physics education and wider research to its learners. This workshop will resolve this by bringing together interested researchers around the world in two hybrid sessions.

Special expectations

– I’m excited getting to think with other colleagues during these workshops about how ideas of performed gender structure what we teach about science in the context of space.

– I’m also excited to work across institutions and around the world on this network. I have gained invaluable colleagues, collaborators, and mentors through previous workshops I have run - as well as learning about innovative research that I otherwise might to have come across. I’m hoping that this event is no different!