In the 'Star Wars' universe, the Force is a powerful energy that can be harnessed for good or evil. Similarly, artificial intelligence (AI) in education is often depicted as a transformative power capable of revolutionizing teaching and learning. This paper explores possible futures in education in relation to generative AI and predictive AI, using informed speculation to offer insights into the future. As our visions for tomorrow's technology are being defined today, it is important to invite teachers to define the technology we should strive for. This paper presents two co-design workshops involving seven secondary-school teachers with diverse experiences and understandings of AI. Analysis of the workshop recordings informed three narrative episodes that center on lesson-planning in the future, the technical divide, and assessment agency. Education fiction is used as a mode for deep reflection on the results, staging scenarios and exploring the implications of AI in education. The results suggest that while teachers fear changes to their profession, they also offer constructive ideas for AI's potential use. This informed speculation helps to elaborate on challenges and possibilities AI poses for teachers, providing important insights into how to harness AI effectively in teaching while avoiding techno-solutionism by broadening future perspectives.

Engineering design projects can enhance authenticity, increase relevance, and integrateSTEM subjects without compromising their individual integrity. Nevertheless, the literature also warns that few STEM subject integration projects acknowledge students’ contexts and everyday problems. This study explores how teachers prepare for STEM subject integration in an engineering design project in a Swedish upper secondary school Technology programme and examines the process and outcomes of project implementation from both teachers’ and students’ viewpoints. The design project induces students’ solutions for bettering their everyday physical school context regarding well-being, feasibility, and sustainability. Collection of data employed participatory observations, and interviews with teachers and students. Results are presented as four themes: (1) integration and collaboration can be encouraged through project organization; (2) the engineering design process is the centrepiece of the integrated project; (3) models and modelling are primarily used for communication of design ideas; and (4) integration of STEM content and methods seldomly draws on more than two disciplines. Findings show that utilizing the school’s technology profle provides an accessible pathway to promote integrated STEM. However, although several teachers demonstrate enthusiasm for the real-world relevance of design projects, integration remains challenging. Since the project was mostly viewed as being technology and engineering-based, science and mathematics were present to a lesser degree, which made integration of all STEM subjects demanding. Nevertheless, the project could be seen as responding to an “extended STEM problem” in that components from health sciences were also incorporated.

Les projets de conception technique peuvent renforcer l’authenticité, accroître la pertinence et intégrer les matières STIM sans compromettre leur intégrité individuelle. Néanmoins, la documentation existante met également en garde contre le fait que peu de projets d’intégration des matières STIM tiennent compte des contextes et des problèmes quotidiens des élèves. Cette étude s’intéresse à la manière dont les enseignants se préparent à l’intégration des matières STIM dans un projet de conception technique d’un programme de technologie applicable à la deuxième partie du secondaire dans une école suédoise et examine le processus et les résultats de la mise en œuvre du projet, du point de vue des enseignants et des élèves. Le projet de conception incite les élèves à trouver des solutions pour améliorer au quotidien le contexte physique de l’école en ce qui a trait aux enjeux de bien-être, de faisabilité et de durabilité. La collecte des données a fait appel à des observations participatives et à des entrevues avec des enseignants et des étudiants. On présente les résultats sous la forme de quatre thèmes: (1) on peut encourager l’intégration et la collaboration par l’aspect de l’organisation du projet; (2) le processus de conception technique est la pièce maîtresse du projet intégré; (3) les modèles et la modélisation sont principalement utilisés pour communiquer les idées de conception; et (4) l’intégration du contenu et des méthodes des STIM fait rarement appel à plus de deux matières. Les résultats indiquent que l’utilisation du profl technologique de l’école constitue une voie accessible pour promouvoir l’intégration des STIM. Cependant, bien que plusieurs enseignants fassent preuve d’enthousiasme en ce qui concerne la pertinence dans le monde réel des projets de conception, l’intégration reste difcile. Étant donné que le projet était principalement perçu comme fondé sur la technologie et l’ingénierie, les sciences et les mathématiques étaient moins présentes, ce qui a rendu l’intégration de toutes les matières STIM laborieuse. Néanmoins, le projet peut être vu comme une réponse à un « problème STIM étendu» dans la mesure où on a également incorporé des éléments des sciences de la santé.

Developing environmental literacy for sustainability requires systems thinking, a challenging task that can be enhanced through interactive visual learning environments. This study investigates how adaptivity influences pupils’ performance and perception of a learning tool called Tracing Carbon, aimed at improving systems thinking skills related to the carbon cycle for grades 7-9. Data were gathered from 69 pupils across four classes as they used Tracing Carbon in their science lessons. The pupils were assigned to experimental (adaptive task and quiz difficulties) and control (random task and quiz difficulties) conditions. Performance and perceptions were evaluated through quiz logs and questionnaires. The study’s initial findings indicate that adaptivity can positively impact pupils’ performance in classroom settings. For the adaptive condition, performance correlated with higher cognitive engagement and learning satisfaction. In contrast, the random (control) condition showed a negative correlation between learning satisfaction and cognitive load, indicating a preference for less demanding tasks in the random condition. Despite potential study limitations, such as a relatively small sample size, preliminary analyses indicate that the adaptive condition improved quiz performance and reduced cognitive load compared to the random condition. Future analyses will be conducted to examine links between adaptivity and the number and type of errors in both tasks and quizzes, and pupils’ learning outcomes.

We present a visual analytics approach for multi-level visual exploration of users' interaction strategies in an interactive digital environment. The use of interactive touchscreen exhibits in informal learning environments, such as museums and science centers, often incorporate frameworks that classify learning processes, such as Bloom's taxonomy, to achieve better user engagement and knowledge transfer. To analyze user behavior within these digital environments, interaction logs are recorded to capture diverse exploration strategies. However, analysis of such logs is challenging, especially in terms of coupling interactions and cognitive learning processes, and existing work within learning and educational contexts remains limited. To address these gaps, we develop a visual analytics approach for analyzing interaction logs that supports exploration at the individual user level and multi-user comparison. The approach utilizes algorithmic methods to identify similarities in users' interactions and reveal their exploration strategies. We motivate and illustrate our approach through an application scenario, using event sequences derived from interaction log data in an experimental study conducted with science center visitors from diverse backgrounds and demographics. The study involves 14 users completing tasks of increasing complexity, designed to stimulate different levels of cognitive learning processes. We implement our approach in an interactive visual analytics prototype system, named VISID, and together with domain experts, discover a set of task-solving exploration strategies, such as “cascading” and “nested-loop', which reflect different levels of learning processes from Bloom's taxonomy. Finally, we discuss the generalizability and scalability of the presented system and the need for further research with data acquired in the wild.

Despite the importance of emotions in science education, research on affect remains sparse. A promising direction is to explore the role of immersive visualisation in evoking affective responses. We investigate whether touch-based zooming interaction with a tabletop visualisation of the tree of life evokes various affective responses, particularly, the epistemic affective responses of awe, curiosity, surprise, and confusion. Ten students participated in semi-structured interviews while interacting with the visualisation. Verbal utterances and interactions with the visual interface were videorecorded. Students verbal and non-verbal affective responses in relation to five evolutionary themes were analysed. Results revealed that students expressed all four affective responses while engaging the zooming feature, with awe and surprise most frequently uttered. Most affective responses were associated with the themes of biological relationships and evolutionary time. Awe was highly associated with evolutionary time, surprise with biological relationships, and confusion with both these conceptual themes. For eight participants, awe was the initial affective response generated after exposure to the dynamic tree of life. The study demonstrates that interacting with an immersive visualisation through zooming can induce affective responses in relation to multiple conceptual themes in evolution. The findings provide insight into multidirectional interconnections between affect, dynamic visualisation, and biology concepts.

The objective of problem solving in technology and engineering is to change the material world for the benefit of society, through processes of design. Design thinking – or design-based thinking – is thus a unique and crucial component of problem solving in technology and engineering. It also has connections to arts and design studies in which creativity and innovative thinking are central. In addition, design-based thinking has been applied in many other areas, disciplines, and educational initiatives such as designs for learning and design-based pedagogy. In this chapter, we shall expound on the notion of design-based thinking, in relation to problem solving in technology and engineering and more broadly across the STEM disciplines. We argue that the three components authentic thinking, visual thinking, and entrepreneurial thinking constitute essential conceptual elements of design-based thinking. We relate this conception of design-based thinking to problem solving, teaching interventions, and curriculum design in 21st-century STEM education.

The STEM acronym permeates educational research and practice. While the potential pedagogical merits of STEM as an opportunity to integrate knowledge from the contributing disciplines and achieve a holistic understanding are well-documented, little is known about how out-of-field teachers contend with contributing to such a vision in practice. With an intended audience of STEM teacher practitioners in mind, this chapter focuses on international expert views of technology (T) and engineering (E) in out-of-field teaching of integrated STEM. The presented views were solicited from experienced international researchers, education practitioners, and professionals in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Experts’ views emerged as five overarching themes that primarily identified: the importance of maintaining subject integrity, the implicit nature of technology and engineering in teaching activities, the centrality of engineering design processes, the necessity of collaboration and cooperation, and the need for specialised teacher competence. The emergent views have practical implications regarding engineering design and design-based teaching for informing curriculum design, teacher education programmes, as well as STEM textbooks and resource composition. The chapter closes by illuminating the question as to whether integrated STEM remains a sought epistemological position or only a method to teach STEM subjects, a dilemma whereupon our future work with STEM experts shall continue to explore.

Contemporary secondary technology education often does not mirror engineering practice. Whilethere is much rhetoric on the need for promoting active, authentic, and real-world professionalexperiences in upper secondary school, most technology education teaching remains traditional,and teacher centered. This study investigates the affordances for authenticity of role-play-basedproject work in a Swedish upper secondary software engineering course. The project requiredstudents (aged 17–18) to assume the role of software engineer employees at a web-designbusiness with the task of creating a website for a gaming company, where the course instructorassumed the role of the web business owner. The six-week project included the formulation of adesign plan, back-end programming, developing and refining the design and layout, adjustingcontent for accessibility, and publication of the web site. Inductive analysis of observations fromthe unfolding role-play in five student groups (total 22 students), and interviews with fourstudents and the teacher exposed salient themes related to authenticity of the role-play-basedproject exposed within teacher-student interactions and student intragroup interactions. Teacherstudent interactions revealed that the teacher exhibited various roles in the project, initially actingas a customer but also the responsibilities of a boss and a teacher-mentor. In the latter instance,students perceived the project as more school-oriented than authentic, expressing a preference foran external customer, and at the same time, the teacher tried to align the task with the project’scurriculum requirements. Student intragroup interactions showed that despite highly varied roles,students felt that their assigned roles enhanced the authenticity of their experience, although theywere unaware of what a real scenario might entail. Successful students emphasized theimportance of structured work and clear responsibilities to meet the project goal. The findingsshow that while role-playing is not necessarily always equivalent to reality, it was viewed as afulfilling and situated learning experience that simulated a real-world scenario, but which reliedon mutual confidence and responsibility between the role-players. Future work will combine thefindings with existing frameworks of authenticity to inform the development of role-playscenarios in upper secondary engineering education. 

The aim of this study is to investigate students’ meaning–making of multiple visual representations of epigenetics at different levels of biological organisation, and to discern what visual aspects of the multiple visual representations might influence students’ reasoning. Adopting an exploratory approach, we analysed how students made meaning of visually communicated epigenetics phenomena while pointing at and reasoning about the multiple visual representations as part of semi-structured focus groups. We investigated students’ meaning-making of the multiple visual representations by analysing their indications through physical pointing and accompanying verbal utterances. The analysis revealed meaning-making and the nature of linking between levels of organisation in four distinct patterns, namely intra horizontal linking, inter horizontal linking, one level vertical linking and two level vertical linking. In addition, five different visual characteristics of the multiple visual representations emerged as influencing students’ reasoning while linking between different organisation levels: multiple visual representations, salient visual features, analogous visual features, familiar visual elements, and textual adjuncts. The study shows that multiple visual representations at different levels of organisation can support students’ meaning-making of epigenetics, indicating that this way of communicating can be transferable to other biological domains. Potential implications for future research and teaching practice are provided.

Background: Authenticity in schools has been highlighted asimportant for improving students’ engagement and learning, andto prepare them for future job markets, especially in science andtechnology.Purpose: This study investigates students’ perceived authenticityof a developed innovation project when implemented in an uppersecondary technology education program.Sample: Three cohorts of students (n = 199) attended a first-yeartechnology course at a Swedish upper secondary school in 2016,2017 and 2018, respectively. In addition, eleven students from the2016 cohort were interviewed two years later to obtain their viewson how the innovation project in the first-year course influencedtheir performance in a subsequent advanced technology coursetaken in 2017–2018.Design and Methods: Groups of students participated in the firstphase of an innovation project in the first-year course, a five-weekmodule, cooperatively designing solutions to real-world problems.A Likert scale questionnaire measured the degree of perceivedauthenticity in line with Herrington, Reeves and Oliver’s (2010)key elements. Focus group interviews were conducted afterthe second phase – a 20-week follow-up module in the subsequentadvanced course – about how authentic they perceived the firstand second phases to be.Results: A questionnaire measured the degree of perceivedauthenticity of the students for the first phase, for each of thethree years. Coaching and scaffolding received the highest ratingsacross all three years, whereas Reflection was perceived as havingthe lowest authenticity. In a qualitative component of the studystudents found both phases positive, and five new themes ofstudents’ perception of their experiences were revealed.Conclusions: The similarities in perceived authenticity between thethree cohorts suggest consistency in students’ perceptions ofauthenticity. However, they did not feel that the project gavethem the opportunity to reflect on their learning. According tointerviews conducted two years later, they perceived their experiencesof the innovation project as having induced creativity, commitment,ownership, motivation, and real-world connection,although at times it was also a challenge to think for themselvesand to collaborate with others.KEYWORDSStudent perceptions;authentic learning;innovation; technologyeducation; high schoolCONTACT