‘We did see the lapwing’ – practising environmental citizenship in upper-secondary science education

This article explores factors that promote the practice of environmental citizenship in science education and aims to contribute to the development of the concept of practising environmental citizenship. We follow six Norwegian secondary students (aged 16–17) participating in a small-scale intervention study conducting an assignment on a socioscientific issue (SSI) in their local district. Our findings reveal that dealing with an SSI in real-world settings through out-of-school activities set in the students’ local district is important for practising environmental citizenship. This article also addresses the tensions between the practice of environmental citizenship and the cultural issues related to school science. Our findings reveal that tensions exist between working with ready-made-science, as students normally do, to deal with science-in-the-making through an SSI. This research discuss the practical implications of the concept of practising environmental citizenship in science.     

Video clips for YouTube: Collaborative video creation as an educational concept for knowledge acquisition and attitude change related to obesity stigmatization

Mobile phones and advanced web-based video tools have pushed forward new paradigms for using video in education: Today, students can readily create and broadcast their own digital videos for others and create entirely new patterns of video-based information structures for modern online-communities and multimedia environments. This paradigm shift in video usage can be used for advanced learning about complex topics in higher education, for example, learning about socio-scientific or medical topics. Yet–technology aside–applicable educational concepts using collaborative video creation as a method need to be developed. In the present study, we investigate a specific concept designed to fight obesity stigmatization by developing knowledge using a learning-through-design-approach. We expected that creating videos can actually contribute to a deeper understanding of obesity and to a reduction in stigmatizing attitudes–when compared to a control condition. Dependent measures were based on the students’ video products, obesity-related knowledge and attitudes. The course group assessed their own knowledge on causes of obesity and stigmatization because of obesity higher in the post-test than a control group who read a newspaper article on the topic. A corresponding significant reduction in stigmatizing attitudes was found. In sum, results indicate significant differences between students who produced YouTube videos and a control group of students. The results are interpreted as a confirmation of our initial assumptions and evidence indicating that the program is successfully applicable in higher education.     

Missed opportunities: the IEA’s study of civic education and civic education in post‐communist countries

This article argues that the opportunity in Phase I of the IEA’s Civic Education Study to include the new democracies’ experiences of citizenship education have not been sufficiently exploited. ‘Borrowing’ citizenship education from abroad and citizenship education for ‘civil society’ have been chosen as examples of problems in the new democracies which have not been exploited. The final section focuses on the question of why new and recurring problems in citizenship education, which occurred in post‐communist Europe, have not been identified, described or analysed in the IEA’s publication New paradigms and new recurring paradoxes in education for citizenship: an international comparison. The paper also points to some of the circumstances that seem to have had an impact on which problems were analysed in the study and which problems were largely ignored.