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Upper secondary students’ ways of positioning the science studies course as potentially relevant to their lives
Summary
Researchers examined how Swedish upper secondary students position a general science course as relevant to their lives, conducting six focus groups with 24 students in non-science programmes. Through thematic analysis, five relevance themes emerged — vocational life, self-fulfilment, everyday actions, information handling, and societal impact — offering teachers a framework for joint reflection on science education relevance.
This article focuses on Swedish upper secondary students’ ways of positioning the course science studies (Swe: Naturkunskap) as potentially relevant to their lives. Six focus groups with students (N=24) studying programmes other than science and technology programmes were conducted. Through an inductively oriented thematic analysis, five themes representing different ways to position science studies as potentially relevant were developed: Relevance for future vocational life; Relevance for self-fulfilment, Relevance for actions in everyday life; Relevance for handling information in society; Relevance for having an impact on the world. The study contributes to knowledge about in what ways science education can be experienced as relevant to students who do not specialise in science, from the lens of the student’s perspective. We argue that the themes can support teachers’ and students’ joint reflections concerning the relevance of science studies.
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