The research environment UmSTER (Umeå Science and Technology Education Research) has over the past 20 years developed into a well-established interdisciplinary research environment with great diversity and with national and international collaborations. The research within UmSTER includes a significant breadth of theoretical and methodological perspectives.
The research environment UmSTER (Umeå Science and Technology Education Research) has over the past 20 years developed into a well-established interdisciplinary research environment with great diversity and with national and international collaborations. These collaborations have contributed to a significant breadth of theoretical and methodological perspectives in our research. UmSTER has an open and collegial climate where it is easy to collaborate receive constructive feedback. This provides good support for conducting research of high quality and productivity - which is reflected in the more than 20 dissertations produced in the environment since 2004. The research includes several different types of theoretical and methodological research approaches, and is often conducted in close cooperation with schools, preschools and other universities.
The research aims at increasing our knowledge about teaching and learning in science, technology, and engineering (STE) education, exploring questions related to teaching practices, subject content, learning contexts, gender issues, epistemic beliefs, emotions, and motivation. The research focuses both students and educators, and includes all stages of formal education, from preschool to university. Our research often employs an applied approach and addresses concerns that are pertinent for teachers in schools and universities. Leaders of the research environment are Professor Mikael Winberg and Professor Christina Ottander. Within the framework of UmSER's seminar series, theoretical, methodological, and practice-related issues are discussed. Besides the general seminar series, Associate Professor Maria Berge leads a seminar series specialized on identity and power perspectives in science and technology education and, together with Associate Professor Johanna Lönngren, a seminar on technology and engineering education research.
Our research can be divided into six general, partially overlapping, areas, which are briefly described below. For more information about the areas, please see the personal web pages of the contact persons.
Although motivation and epistemic beliefs have been shown to be central for learning, there is no consensus on what types of motivation or epistemic beliefs are most conducive to learning, school achievement, and student wellbeing. Within our research, we study the impact of different types of motivation and epistemic beliefs on students’ cognition. We also want to understand how the teaching and learning environment shape students’ motivation and epistemic beliefs. At the core of this research are whole-school-collaborations with teachers to develop and test instructional practices that foster adaptive forms of student motivation. In upcoming research, we will explore how student motivation and epistemic beliefs influence students’ interactions with AI in (mathematics) and the associated learning.
Contact: Mikael Winberg, Eva Knekta, Anders Hofverberg
In this research area, we study the role of emotions in STE teaching and learning. We are particularly interested in how students express and negotiate different emotions when they encounter epistemic challenges (e.g., grappling with uncertainty or ambiguity while working with wicked sustainability challenges). How do students’ emotions shape students’ interaction and collaborative learning? And what emotions are diverse groups of students (not) expected to express and leverage for during such learning? What is the pedagogical potential of including wonder in school science? Moreover, we study how educators can create emotionally supportive learning environments and provide emotional support to improve learning. We typically use multimodal data (e.g., video-recordings).
Contact: Johanna Lönngren, Mikael Winberg, Christina Ottander, Maria Berge
PhD-students: Somayeh Ebrahimi
What norms can we find in classrooms? Who feels welcomed and who does not? These are questions we explore in our research on identity and power issues in Science, Technology, and Engineering education. We are, for example, interested in racial/ethnic, social class, and gender studies. We are interested in discourses related to equity and diversity issues, and the ways those discourses are related to teaching and learning practices. A better understanding of the power dynamics in STE teaching and learning is needed to ensure the best possible education, a vision that most schools and universities put forward as crucial and central.
Contact: Maria Berge, Johanna Lönngren, Katerina Günter
PhD-students: Somayeh Ebrahimi
Educators at all levels of education are today required to integrate sustainability into their teaching, but we still need a lot more research to better understand how such integration can be done successfully. Our research in this area focuses on STE aimed at developing students’ action competence, preparing them for dealing with wicked sustainability problems, socio-scientific issues (SSI), value conflicts, and irreducible uncertainty. We also study citizenship education and the role of emotions in environmental and sustainability education (see above).
Contact: Johanna Lönngren, Eva Knekta, Christina Ottander, Annika Manni, Mikael Winberg
PhD-students: Birte Svenja Reichstein, Stefan Westin, Pooja Mayanglambam
Our research in this area focuses on how educational cultures, teaching methods, and the physical environment interact and affect science learning in preschool and school year 1-6. Another focus is science teaching continuity across school forms. We conduct research in close collaboration with teachers in preschool and schools, as well with actors in other academic disciplines. One example is studies of arts-science integration, another is sustainable outdoor education at large preschools.
Contact: Sofie Areljung, Christina Ottander, Annika Manni, Helena Näs
Within this area, we study how instructional practices influence students’ learning in science, technology, and engineering. Our projects are often design-based and depart from co-operations between teachers and researchers, with the aim to improving instructional practices in diverse educational contexts. For example, we explore how chemistry instruction can be supported by visualizing complex content through digital tools, such as Virtual Reality. Additionally, we investigate how scientific visualization in immersive learning environments influences interest development and learning processes. This includes studying learning in nonformal and informal educational settings, such as science centers. We also study how context-based instruction and instruction with socio-scientific issues can support learning of subject knowledge and scientific inquiry practices. Moreover, we study teachers’ instructional practices and their development of didactical strategies. In the context of our research on emotions (see above), we also focus on scaffolding for learning, especially emotional scaffolding for dealing with uncertainty and ambiguity.
Contact: Karolina Broman, Johanna Lönngren, Christina Ottander, Eva Knekta, Anders Hofverberg, Sofie Areljung, Mikael Winberg, Madelen Bodin
PhD-students: Anna Lodén
UmSTER regularly invites national and international researchers to exchange ideas and experiences. Nationally, we collaborate with Chalmers Institute of Technology, Linnaeus University and the Universities of Luleå, Gothenburg, Mälardalen, Karlstad, Stockholm, and Uppsala. We also have valuable exchanges with several European institutions, for example, Aalborg University, NTNU (Norway), Arctic University of Norway, Åbo Akademi in Vaasa, and through participation in projects within Horizon 2020 and the European Society for Engineering Education (SEFI). Beyond Europe, we collaborate with individual researchers and institutions in the USA, Canada, South Africa, Australia, and Malaysia, for example, within the context of the Emotions in Engineering Education Network. We are always interested in exploring new opportunities for collaboration. Don’t hesitate to get in touch with any of us!
