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Health and sustainable development are two urgent and global issues that needto be addressed by all societies.The issues are also an important part of the school curricula and present in everyday teaching.By this education has a key function in both qualifyingand socializing students to becomeactive individuals and citizens. Accordingly, health and sustainable development should be considered as both science and social science issues. The purpose of this chapter is to analyze and discuss how health and sustainable development aredescribed in Swedish textbooksforBiology, Science and Physicaleducationand health. The theoretical point of departure is the distinction between individual and societal/political responsibility. Thechapter showsthatthe textbooks create what we call a paradox of responsibility. This means that the issues are de-politicized (individualized) and that the responsibility is placed on the individual rather than on the societal/political level even when such solutions are needed. How textbooks portray issues is of great importance since it influences students understanding of the problems and their thinkablesolutions. We argue that health and sustainable developmentin school alwaysshould be portrayed as both individual andsocietal/political issues in order to empower the students to deal with the issues in a more adequate way.

Issues of sustainability are complex and often steeped with ethical and political questions without predefined or general answers. This paper deals with how secondary and upper secondary teachers discuss these complex issues, by analysing their aims for Education for Sustainable Development. With inspiration from discourse theory, their articulations about students as political subjects are analysed. Critical thinking emerged as a nodal point in teachers' discussions. In this study, critical thinking is articulated as having various qualitative meanings related to different epistemological views. On one hand, critical thinking is articulated to invite room for subjectification; but on the other hand, room for subjectification is challenged when critical thinking is articulated through the educational aims of qualification and socialisation. A consequence of changing epistemological view might be that political and ethical issues take a back seat.

This article analyses how 'eco-certified children' are constructed as desirable subjects in teaching materials addressing education for sustainable development. We are interested in how discourses structure this cherished practice and how this practice has become 'natural' and obvious for us. A discourse analysis is carried out by looking at the material through the lens of Foucault's notion of pastoral power. The analysis departs from teaching material addressing issues on sustainable development: (1) textbooks for primary and secondary school; (2) games targeted at preschool and school children; and (3) children's books about sustainable development. The results show that the discourse of education for sustainable development is characterized by scientific and mathematical objectiv- ity and faith in technological development. It emphasizes the right of the individ- ual and the obligation to make free, however 'correct', choices. In the teaching materials, the eco-certified child therefore emerges as knowing, conscious, rational, sacrificing and active. This child is constructed through knitting together personal guilt with global threats, detailed individual activities with rescuing the flock and the planet. In a concluding discussion, we discuss how ESD is framed in a neoliberal ideology. With the help of ESD, an economic discourse becomes dressed in an almost poetic language.

Today is the term "Education for Sustainable Development" (ESD) tainted by with notions of the "exemplary life" and "desirable future". This practice is exercised in school all over the world. The aim with the paper is to unveil how teaching materials in ESD are governing students through different technologies of the self. The paper departs from the idea that discourses decide what is possible to think, say and do in a specific historical and cultural context. To understand how these discourses are internalised into peoples thinking, saying and doing we study a process of governmentality. This process must be understood on three levels: Political rationalities; Political programs; Technologies of the self.Our paper problematizes the concepts of "the good person" and "the exemplarily life". We are analysing three different types of teaching material often used in ESD. One criterion for the choice is that the material use science and mathematical calculations for the represen-tation of sustainable development, since we are interested in how these rationalities are used in the process of governmentality.The teaching material is analysed through discourse analysis.In the result can we show how diagrams and mathematical calculations used in the teaching material can be understood as governing technologies for four different political rationalities: 1) Individuals are free and obliged to make choices in the modern society; 2) Everyone is responsible for a common future; 3) Belief in scientific and technological solutions; 4) Idea of the progress. Calculations and Diagrams are instruments in governing the modern human being. These – scientific – representations of ideas of how society should be organ-ised, of how an expected future can be met and how individuals should act are governing our souls, how we want to be in order to be seen as good and "eco-certified" people.

The aim of the paper is to analyse how teenagers (age 14-15) talk about body and health after a finished work with a socio-scientific issue on the same theme. How can their discussions about body, health and science education be understood in terms of a constantly ongoing identity construction, especially in terms of gender, social class, ethnicity and "studentship"? Our aim is to show how these categories intersect and produce meaning in students' talk about a topic socio-scientific issue. The paper is departing from a social theory on learning, e.g. learning and identity construction are interdependent on each other; meaning is constructed in relation to a community. Sadler (2009) has emphasized socio-scientific issues as a way to open up for communities of practice where students' identities can be expressed and they can use appropriated discourses. In this paper we intend to problematize Sadler's theories and show the complexity of students' identity construction during school work. Even if they can engage in a common issue, they are doing it in completely different ways. We will use an intersectional perspective to get deeper understanding of the relations between science learning and students identity construction. The paper also intends to discuss what subject positions that are available when students discuss a topical, political issue in the science classroom.The article is mainly built on data from focus group discussions about knowledge and values concerning body and health. Focus group 1 consisted of four girls from "Suburban school", a monoethnic school in a suburban, middle class area with high educational level. Focus group 2 consisted of four boys from the same school. Focus group 3 consisted of six girls from "Urban school", located in a multiethnic urban area with low socio-economic status, low educational level and high degree of unemployment. Focus group 4 consisted of four boys from the same school. We analyse the discussions from a discourse psychological perspective, e.g. how the students ...

According to previous research, in contemporary western societies health is seen as an increasingly non-political issue. Rather than being at the centre of collective decision-making and democratic politics, health is regarded as resting on individual responsibility. In our study, we address the question of nutrition education in schools as well as the question of citizenship and democracy. The study consists of two parts: firstly, we analyse whether health – more precisely nutrition and diet – is portrayed as a political or non-political issue in textbooks for secondary school; secondly, and informed by the results from our analysis, we dissect and problematize what kind of citizenship that is constructed in textbooks. From a theoretical framework of politics, the article explores how citizenship emerges. Our findings so far show that health, and more precisely stress, is depoliticized in the textbooks.

There are only a few studies about how primary school students engage in socio-scientific discussions. This study aims to add to this field of research by focusing on how 9–10-year-olds in Sweden and England handle climate change as a complex environmental socio-scientific issue (SSI), within the context of their own lives and in relation to society at large. It focuses on how different interpretative repertoires were used by the students in discussions to legitimise or question their everyday lifestyles. They discussed four possible options that a government might consider to help reduce carbon dioxide production. Six main repertoires were identified: Everyday life, Self-Interest, Environment, Science and Technology, Society and Justice. The Everyday life repertoire was used when students related their discussion to their everyday lifestyles. Science and technology-related solutions were offered to maintain or improve things, but these were sometimes rather unrealistic. Arguments related to environment and health frequently appeared to have a superior status compared to the others. Findings also highlighted how conflicts between the students were actually productive by bringing in several perspectives to negotiate the solutions. These primary school students were, therefore, able to discuss and negotiate a complex real-world SSI. Students positioned themselves as active contributors to society, using their life experiences and limited knowledge to understand the problems that affected their everyday lives. Honing these skills within a school science community of practice could facilitate primary students' engagement with SSIs and empower them as citizens.

This study identifies and categorizes the discursive repertoires used by 9-10 year old children in Sweden and England during discussions about the socio-scientific issue of global warming. School science is a community of practice where student identities and discourses can be expressed and developed, and the research focuses on how the use of repertoires is related to the identities the students express in their discussions. It explores what repertoires become important in the discussions, which identities the students express, and what differences there are between children's discussions in Sweden and England. The children discussed four possible options that a government might consider to help reduce global warming. Findings indicate that children in both countries use a range of similar repertoires when discussing global warming. When these repertoires are in conflict with each other, students have to 'renegotiate' their own identities. Socio-economic status appears to have an effect on the intensity and depth of argument in the Swedish schools, whereas in the English schools the level and quality of argument seemed to be more closely connected to children's familiarity with a discursive classroom environment. Young children seem capable of applying a variety of arguments that are logical to them according to the repertoire(s) they employ, but we must encourage changes to pedagogical practice that enable all children to engage in such socio-scientific discussions.

This mini-symposium aims to stress issues about how pedagogical models like e.g. SSI, science for girls and ESD construct who fits in or not in the science classroom. These models are developed from a good intention of including "all" students, opening up possibilities for them who often are seen as outsiders in science culture. But we claim that these seemingly democratic pedagogical models fabricate desirable and undesirable subjects. Often, the norms for fitting in can be understood in terms of images of gender, ethnicity and social class. A movement in science education research highlights the importance of making science knowledge "useful" for "everyone" in "everyday life". The aim with these efforts is to let students develop scientific literacy, which often is talked about as "necessary" for citizenship. Different practices carry strong ideas of designing the future, and emphasize the need of competences that are inscribed in the concept of "future citizen". These competencies are often described in terms of problem-solving, critical thinking and making rational decisions to contribute to a sustainable world. In relation to this image, those children that don't want to make decisions, solve problems become constructed as failures. In a wider perspective, they can be seen as threatening the intentions of science contribution to a sustainable world. In this symposium we would like to raise critical issues about what norms that are constructing individuals, from different social categories, as desirable or non-desirable in science classroom. These issues will be discussed in relation to six examples from empirical studies which are problematizing the construction of the desirable science student. These examples are: 1) PISA construction of the science student; 2) Social class in science class; 3) Narratives of females and science; 4) Gender, sexuality and normality; 5) Who is the democratic citizen?; 6) Who is the sustainable citizen?