Abstract
The context of science education is expanding beyond the classroom. This chapter examines five layers of this expansion, namely, (1) bringing elements of societal practices into classroom instruction, (2) understanding the entire school as an activity system and community of learning, (3) pursuing science learning in activity systems outside the school, (4) working with indigenous and other communities as funds of knowledge and alternative epistemologies, and (5) working with social movements as dynamic contexts of activist science learning. Studies of these five layers, based on or inspired by cultural-historical activity theory, are discussed to identify potentials and challenges of expansion. It is argued that movement, negotiation, and hybridization between the contextual layers have the potential to revitalize also classroom learning in science education. This inter-contextual movement requires new theoretical and methodological openings in research. The chapter identifies transformative agency, concept formation in the wild, boundary crossing and third spaces, and formative interventions as such openings currently being developed in activity-theoretical research.
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Engeström, Y. (2017). Expanding the Scope of Science Education: An Activity-Theoretical Perspective. In: Hahl, K., Juuti, K., Lampiselkä, J., Uitto, A., Lavonen, J. (eds) Cognitive and Affective Aspects in Science Education Research. Contributions from Science Education Research, vol 3. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58685-4_26
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