Socio-cultural aspects of science in the science classroom: teachers' perspectives

Students' interest in science is declining. Science teaching often have science as facts as its main focus. In such science teaching there is often little room for socio-cultural aspects of science. It has, however, been shown that students could gain more interest in science if broader perspectives are included. Making socio-cultural aspects a topic in the science classroom is considered hard. In order to gain more knowledge about issues related to the implementation of socio-cultural aspects in the science classroom we have focused on teachers' perspectives. In this presentation we will provide results from a three-year research-project. It is a case study of six teachers, teaching science in grades 1-9. During the project the teachers met in focus groups four times a year and discussed different aspects of science. During the focus-group meetings they also planned and reflected on classroom activities with a focus on socio-cultural issues, which they implemented between meetings. Questionnaires, interviews and classroom observations where used in addition to the data collected from the focus groups. The results provide information on teachers' perspectives on appropriate approaches and activities for different years, as well as information about teachers' perspectives on both challenges and benefits from implementing socio-cultural aspects.