Karim M. Hamza

• PhD
• Professor at Stockholm University

We present an empirically based model for modeling the quality of pre-service teacher reflection. Conversations from twelve groups of a total of 47 pre-service teachers were video recorded and transcribed verbatim. First, we analyzed their conversations through practical epistemology analysis and an operationalization of Dewey’s definition of refle...

The purpose of this chapter is to illustrate the idea behind the notion of mangling as part of the empirical development of didactic models. Didactic models range from macro theories concerned with the selection of goals, content, and methods to micro level modelling of individual lessons and students’ performance, and may take various shapes such...

We explored the potential for addressing nature of science through a historic narrative about disagreement between researchers concerning a socio-scientific issue, incidence of juvenile thyroid cancer following the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident. The narrative was developed from authentic sources and tested in two cycles. Eight groups of three...

In the current debate, there is no consensus on the relationship between knowledge and values in students’ reasoning and argumentation in socio-scientific and sustainability issues, i.e. if these should be addressed as separate entities or rather treated as a whole. In this study, we address this question empirically, with students engaging in two...

Socioscientific issues (SSI) concern social issues, often lacking simple solutions, that relate to science and often also risk controversies. SSIs have become an established part of science education, aiming to teach students not only about content knowledge but also about the nature of science and to offer them practice in argumentation and decisi...

Research is needed to explain in more depth what happens and why in teacher-researcher collaboration. Previous research on collaboration points out issues such as asymmetric power relations and cultural differences between professions that can potentially cause problems. This paper examines a Swedish action research project in which teachers and re...

We present an empirically based model for teaching about planning in pre-service science teacher education as part of on-campus courses. Planning is usually taught through the introduction of theoretically based planning models, but these models commonly assume a linear idea of planning that does not match how teachers go about planning. We examine...

The present paper takes its point of departure in risk being a relevant content for science education, and that there are many different approaches to how to incorporate it. By reviewing the academic literature on the use and definitions of risk from fields such as engineering, linguistics and philosophy, we identified key elements of the risk conc...

Anthropomorphisms are widespread at all levels of the educational system even among science experts. This has led to a shift in how anthropomorphisms are viewed in science education, from a discussion of whether they should be allowed or avoided towards an interest in their role in supporting students' understanding of science. In this study we exa...

The levels of stochastic health effects following exposure to low doses of ionising radiation are not well known. A consequence of the uncertainty is that any radiation exposure is met with deep concern—both by the public and by scientists who disagree about how the partly conflicting results from low-dose studies should be interpreted. The concern...

The use of dioramas in educational activities at the museum provides exceptional opportunities for students’ learning. In this study, we present a detailed analysis of student teachers’ moment-by-moment learning during a teaching activity in a museum of natural history. Specifically, we focused on the content and the direction learning takes in res...

Although microteaching is a common approach to engaging preservice teachers in reflection on teaching in on-campus courses, this reflection is usually carried out as a separate part. We examined how preservice middle school science teachers reflected amid planning a 20-min microteaching unit on sustainable development. Six groups of preservice teac...

We present analyses of teacher professional growth during collaboration between science teachers and science education researchers, with special focus on how the differential assumption of responsibility between teachers and researchers affected the growth processes. The collaboration centered on a new conceptual framework introduced by the researc...

In this study, we explore the issues and challenges involved in supporting students’ learning to discern relevant and critical aspects of determining oxidation states of atoms in complex molecules. We present a detailed case of an interaction between three students and a tutor during a problem-solving class, using the analytical tool of practical e...

This article reviews what didactic models are, how they can be produced through didactic modelling and how didactic models can be used for analyses of teaching and learning and for educational designs. The article is as an introduction to this Nordina special issue on didactic models and didactic modelling in science education research.

The development of professional identity during a short-track teacher education program is studied. This article presents how individuals with a strong background in natural sciences describe the teacher education in which they participate. Individual interviews were conducted with 6 student teachers with a doctorate in natural sciences and extensi...

This article reviews what didactic models are, how they can be produced through didactic modelling and how didactic models can be used for analyses of teaching and learning and for educational designs. The article is an introduction to this Nordina special issue on didactic models and didactic modelling in science education research.

This study explores first-year university students’ reasoning as they learn to draw Lewis structures. We also present a theoretical account of the formal procedure commonly taught for drawing these structures. Students’ discussions during problem-solving activities were video recorded and detailed analyses of the discussions were made through the u...

In this paper we present experiences from a joint collaborative research project which may be described as an encounter between a school science teaching practice and a university science didactics research practice. We provide narratives which demonstrate how the encounter between these two communities of practice interacted to produce hybridizati...

In this paper, we review research on how students’ interest in science changes through the primary to secondary school transition. In the literature, the findings generally show that primary students enjoy science but come to lose interest during secondary school. As this claim is based mainly on interview and questionnaire data, that is on seconda...

In this paper we present a methodological approach for analyzing the transformation of interest in science through classroom talk and action. To this end, we use the construct of taste for science as a social and communicative operationalization, or proxy, to the more psychologically oriented construct of interest. To gain a taste for science as pa...

In this article we respond to the discussion by Alexandra Schindel Dimick regarding how the taste analysis presented in our feature article can be expanded within a Bourdieuan framework. Here we acknowledge the significance of field theory to introduce wider reflexivity on the kind of taste that is constituted in the science classroom, while we at...

In this study, we examined how a teacher may make a difference to the way interest develops in a science classroom, especially for students from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds. We adopted a methodology based on the concept of taste for science drawing on the work of John Dewey and Pierre Bourdieu. We investigated through transcripts from v...

This article addresses the problem of treating generalizations of human activity as entities and structures that ultimately explain the activities from which they were initially drawn. This is problematic because it involves a circular reasoning leading to unwarranted claims explaining the originally studied activities of science teaching and learn...

The purpose of this study is to use a comparative approach to scrutinize the common assumption that certain school science activities are theoretical and therefore particularly suited for engaging students with scientific ideas, whereas others are practical and, thus, not equally conducive to engagement with scientific ideas. We compared two school...

In this paper, we analyze the relation between particular, contingent, and general aspects of a school science activity and show how they are intertwined in nontrivial ways as students give explanations for how a real galvanic cell works during conversations with a researcher. The conversations were examined by using practical epistemology analysis...

In this article, I make a case for the potential educative worth of distractions for learning science in the school laboratory. Distractions are operationalized as experiences lying outside the main purpose of the laboratory activity, thereby diverting students’ attention from that purpose. Through a practical epistemology analysis, I examined in c...

It is commonly argued that socio-economic inequalities can explain many of the differences in achievement and participation in science education that have been reported among countries and among schools within a country. We addressed this issue by examining (a) the relationship between variables associated with socio-economic background and applica...

The development of socio-cultural perspectives in education has involved an expansion of the research scope on learning, from being focused primarily on individuals' cognition, to an emphasis on the role of communication and its historical, situational and cultural features (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Rogoff, 1995; Säljö, 2000; Wertsch, 1991; Wickman, 20...

Students' difficulties with learning science have generally been framed in terms of their generalized conceptual knowledge of a science topic as elicited through their explanations of natural phenomena. In this paper, we empirically explore what more goes into giving a scientific account of a natural phenomenon than giving such generalized explanat...

In this paper we present a way to study science learning on a discursive level in a teaching activity designed for a museum of natural history. We used here an analysis of practical epistemologies. The method, which allows a description of students' meaning making in socially shared practices, has been used previously to analyze learning in various...

In this paper we present a way to study science learning on a discursive level in a teaching activity designed for a museum of natural history. We used here an analysis of practical epistemologies. The method, which allows a description of students' meaning making in socially shared practices, has been used previously to analyze learning in various...

Although misconceptions in science have been established in interview studies, their role during the learning process is poorly examined. In this paper, we use results from a classroom study to analyze to what extent nonscientific ideas in electrochemistry that students report in interviews enter into their learning in a more authentic setting. We...

Pea (Pisum sativum L. cv. Fenomen) and sugar beet (Beta vulgaris L. cv. Monohill) were cultivated in nutrient media without or with 10 μM CdCl2. Leaves of the same size and stage of development, detached or still attached to the intact plants, were submerged into redistilled water containing 1 to 250 μM CdCl2. The uptake experiments were run for 1...