Subtexts in the science classroom--an exploration of the social construction of science lessons and school careers

The article addresses two questions: how is student work constructed in the science classroom, and how are studentsʹ science lessons related to the construction(s) of their school careers? The findings presented are results from a longitudinal research project, with field work in two schools for three years. Using a sociocultural approach to learning, the study focuses on the activities of two students in grade eight and nine in a Swedish secondary comprehensive school, and their interactions with peers, the teacher and artifacts of science. The data consist mainly of video and audio recordings of verbal interaction. Using a lesson on magnetic fields as a case analysis, the study reports large differences between the lessons of the two focused students in terms of opportunities for learning both about science and about their social identities. The differences found between the two girls in terms of the development of their grades and their social networks in the class seem to be closely mirrored in the classroom interaction. A comparison of the focused lessons with the rest of the data-set shows that there is a regularity in classroom experiences for the two girls studied. The results show that an understanding of “science” learning in education benefits from considering the different situations and strategies of different students. “Science” for the two girls studied seem to be a lot less, and a lot more, than what one traditionally means by the concept. The analysis can also be seen as one step toward an understanding of how the favoring of certain groups of students (and the simultaneous disfavoring of others) in the Swedish comprehensive school comes about.