Becoming a science teacher in the Anthropocene: scientific knowledge as ‘matters of concern’

ABSTRACT

In the Anthropocene, there is a significant need for new ways to educate about science and environmental problems, including climate issues. This article explores Swedish teacher students’ discussions as they envision their future roles as science teachers in the light of the Anthropocene. At the beginning of their science teacher education, the teacher students are not fully immersed in the established discourses of the educational system as in-service teachers. In this study, we consider how these teacher students’ ‘fresh eyes’ bring views of how knowledge (especially chemistry-related knowledge) matters in education and teaching. Through a lecture that centred planetary boundaries and the Great Acceleration as representations of some main scientific models in the field, the teacher students were introduced to the concept of Anthropocene. Five focus group discussions followed this introduction. Thematic analysis reveals how the acquired knowledge of the introductory lesson challenges the students to express ‘matters of concern’ differently: partly considering a personal, everyday level and partly reformulating their role as future science teachers. The interrelation of these positions is also a concern for the concluding discussion. Furthermore, the article discusses these results as both concerns and possibilities for science education, including science teacher education.

KEYWORDS:

• Anthropocene
• teacher education
• qualitative research

Introduction and background

The concept of the Anthropocene acknowledges the urgency and complexity of environmental and sustainability issues (Reid et al., 2021). One of the overarching perspectives addresses how human activity has damaged the stability of the biogeochemical systems of the earth and atmosphere (Rockström et al., 2009). The importance of education is increasingly emphasised in relation to the recognised need for social transformation (Gilbert, 2016; Reid et al., 2021). This leads us to consider increasingly pressing questions about the role of teaching and the views of knowledge in the sense of educational content in the Anthropocene, considering emerging existential concerns from climate change, inequalities, and biodiversity loss.

Hence, there is a significant need for new ways to educate about science and environmental problems, including climate issues in the Anthropocene (Corner et al., 2018; Gilbert, 2016, 2024; McKenzie, 2021). Educational purposes of science teaching have alternated throughout decades. For example, several of these purposes focused on directing students toward science-oriented careers, providing knowledge related to everyday life and citizenship, or empowering students through powerful knowledge (Gilbert, 2024). Even so, the different purposes have been criticised for ‘turning everything into “stuff to be known” [as a] feature of science education’ (Gilbert, 2024, p. 11). Therefore, a challenge identified by science education research is the problem of a prevailing culture of fact-based ‘one-way communication’. Many strategies for science communication, in both education and policy, continue to primarily focus on conveying general facts more clearly, even though research on education over the past decades clearly shows how this type of communication is limited in bringing about real changes and engagement (Henderson, 2019; Marcinkowski & Reid, 2019; Öhman, 2009). Therefore, in line with Gilbert (2016, p. 188), we argue that a significant reconsideration of science education is required in terms of ‘its content, its purposes, and its relationships’.

Bruno Latour (2004, 2010) provides a theoretical perspective on how ‘matters of fact’ may become ‘matters of concern’ (see further below), with a composition of scientific reasoning and an awareness of the political and open-ended complexity. In this context, a ‘composite discourse’ may be seen as an educational approach that helps make sense of differences and conflicts, treating them as learning opportunities. In other words, it is about an educational experience where students engage deeply in exploring their roles as social subjects within the world.

In this study, we limit our claims to focus empirically on a valuable group of informants: science teacher students at the beginning of their teacher education. We aim to bring their contemporary experiences and voices about new ways of teaching as ‘matters of concern’ (Latour, 2004), when taking the Anthropocene into consideration regarding their future role as teachers, with chemistry-related knowledge as part of their general science teaching subject. Chemistry-related knowledge is highlighted since the context of this study is a science teacher preparation program with the first course in science focusing on physics and chemistry in everyday life. Furthermore, chemistry-related knowledge is viewed as connected to environmental issues, including climate change (Herranen et al., 2021; Jegstad & Sinnes, 2015). In order to address the research aim, we formulate the following research question to guide this study: How do teacher students make meaning of their future teaching of science as ‘matters of concern’ when the Anthropocene is ‘put on the table and made free’?

At the end of the article, we discuss the results in relation to science teacher education. We are interested in its implications for how to approach content in science teacher education. Previous studies of teacher education in the Anthropocene have focused on pedagogy (e.g. Jickling & Blenkinsop, 2020) and not primarily on educational content. Kahn and Zeidler (2016) discussed a multidisciplinary and integrated science teacher education but did not explicitly relate to the Anthropocene.

The concept of Anthropocene

Our age has been declared as the ‘the Anthropocene’ epoch (Crutzen & Stoermer, 2000), a concept initially depicted by geographers to characterise the increasingly noticeable human impact on the earth systems. The Anthropocene, while not officially recognised as a geological time period, aims to describe the most recent period in Earth’s history when human actions began to significantly impact the planet’s climate and ecosystems. While the primary purpose of the Anthropocene was to name the main geological time periods, it has been applied in different contexts and approaches. For example, it has been embraced as an environmental concept, as described above. The concept of the Anthropocene has been problematised regarding its connection to an anthropocentric view of sustainability, its disregard for different contexts, and its indifference to social and climate justice (Gough & Gough, 2022; Haraway, 2015; Raworth, 2017).

Planetary boundaries as an educational perspective

In relation to the Anthropocene as a concept of human impact, the planetary boundaries framework (Rockström et al., 2009; Steffen et al., 2015) is frequently referenced. This framework, underpinned by big data from earth and life sciences, identifies nine global priorities relating to human-induced environmental changes. These nine processes and systems regulate the stability and resilience of the Earth system which is the interaction of land, ocean, atmosphere, and life. Together, they create conditions that our societies depend on. In 2015, an updated version of the framework stated that human activities have driven climate change, biodiversity loss, shifts in nutrient cycles (nitrogen and phosphorus), and land use beyond the boundaries into unprecedented territory (Figure 1) (Steffen et al., 2015). These conclusions have been drawn through the possibility of international collaboration and analyses of considerable amounts of large data sets of research results.

Figure 1. The planetary boundaries framework by Steffen et al. (2015). Credit: J. Lokrantz/Azote based on Steffen et al. (2015).

This modelling shows statistically grounded knowledge about the current urgent situation. At the same time, the difficulties of navigating in a conflict-filled world that requires global action and cooperation on urgent existential issues, each with its unique context, are revealed. Increasing the volume of scientifically reliable data, or even raising more awareness of this general data, has not been sufficient to drive societal change towards a more sustainable trajectory for life on planet Earth (IPCC; IPBES). This pinpoints the educational issue of ‘gap problem’, which assumes a direct causality between knowledge, attitude, and behaviour (KAB) (e.g. Courtenay-Hall & Rogers, 2002; Marcinkowski & Reid, 2019; Öhman, 2009). The ‘gap problem’ refers to the ongoing quest in environmental education where knowledge about environmental issues has been viewed as a factor in engaging in environmentally friendly behaviour (Courtenay-Hall & Rogers, 2002). As Latour (2004) frames, the challenges of the Anthropocene are ‘[…] historically situated, richly diverse matters of concern’ (p. 237). The ‘gap problem’ disregards the complexity and the entanglements of the Anthropocene since it assumes a direct causality. Consequently, the discussion about why, what, and how education and the view of knowledge can be ‘matters of concern’ and can contribute to dealing with living and transforming in the Anthropocene is again spotlighted.

Views on science content in the Anthropocene

In Sweden, as in many other higher education and compulsory school systems, education should be grounded on scientific knowledge and proven experience (Swedish National Agency of Education, 2023). However, the paradigm grounding natural science knowledge is constructed on a view of knowledge as, objective, value-free, and reliable by generalisable statistical evidence (Hudson et al., 2023; Taber, 2014). When it comes to integrating ethically and politically loaded environmental and sustainability issues into science education, this abstract knowledge view might be problematic (Gubler et al., 2019; Taber, 2014). Hence, an ongoing discussion in the research field of science education concerns its methodological and theoretical challenges and how to approach education and curriculum development of science education (e.g. Edwards, 2012; Herranen et al., 2021; Taber, 2014). Mork and colleagues (2021) elaborated and emphasised how teacher educators have key roles in the educational system through preparing pre – and in-service science teachers. Their discussion on the quality of the science teacher educators’ knowledge highlights the importance of deeper learning and critical thinking skills, cross-curricular work, education for sustainable development, and research-based teacher education. These qualities may also be related to education in the Anthropocene. Furthermore, Coles and colleagues (2017, p. 73) suggest that framing science teacher education with the Anthropocene enables approaching science as a background for ‘analysis and evaluation’ and yet acknowledging the societal context of knowledge and individuals’ agency.

As an argument in this discussion, Biesta (2022) articulates why a ‘world-centred education’, should be an urgent concern for education today. He highlights the importance of teaching, not as the transmission of knowledge and skills, but mainly as an act of directing the attention of students to the world where our existence as human beings take place, and what the world is asking from us. Biesta also highlights the unique position of the school as the place where the new generation meets the world and their place in it. Hence, the integration of societal and political issues as climate change and sustainability into science education is a subject of ongoing diverse discussion. This discussion concerns teaching and the purpose of education (Biesta, 2022; Eilam, 2022; Hasslöf & Malmberg, 2015; Öhman, 2009).

Vision III of scientific literacy is critically oriented towards ethico-sociopolitical issues emphasising relevant and relational knowledge in and about science (Sjöström & Eilks, 2018) in relation to the challenges of the Anthropocene (Yavuzkaya et al., 2022). To address world-related problems in the classroom, the teacher has the responsibility to problematise the educational aims to be able to decide ‘what to put on the table and how to make it free’ (Van Poeck & Östman, 2020), which aims to invite students to further explore this content as ‘matters of concern’ (Latour, 2004). In other words, in this way, students may be invited to explore content in relation to their own experiences, relations, priorities, and values (Carlgren, 2020; Yavuzkaya et al., 2022).

Further challenges of knowledge views in the Anthropocene are accentuated when addressing educational knowledge in relation to encounters with the ‘post-truth’, and social media with ‘alternative facts’ as an everyday source of knowing (e.g. Osborne & Pimentel, 2023). Hence, the question of how to approach desirable ‘knowledge’ in educational contexts is high on the contemporary agenda (Lima & Nascimento, 2022). The question of ‘knowledge’ in relation to education, sustainability and Anthropocene embraces a rich and huge field of complex perspectives.

Theoretical framework: Matters of concern

In order to investigate teacher students’ meaning making of their future teaching roles in the Anthropocene era, the concept of ‘matters of concern’ framed by Latour (2004, 2010, 2018) has served as a fruitful analytical lens in this study. Latour (2010) claims that Modernist Constitution presents indisputable and objective matters of fact and subjective opinions and values as mutually exclusive. Through the ‘Compositionist Manifesto’, Latour claims that reality is not built on indisputable facts that speak for themselves (Latour, 2004, 2010). Scientific knowledge is not a collection of objectively acquired facts but rather is a ‘matter of concern’ (as compositions) that is ‘[…] made up of complex interdependencies between nature and society, between the material and the social’ (Van Poeck, 2019, p. 478).

Latour presents matters of concern as a fair position between facts and values that also opens to explore different positions (Latour, 2004). Van Poeck et al. (2016) claim that in a concern-oriented education, there is not a single viewpoint through which one can reach reality. The authors write:

[…] neither facts nor values can exist by themselves. This is precisely what Latour intends with his dual mode of using ‘matter of concern’: in the same way, as facts can only exist by the values, concerns and attachments that sustain them, values are completely powerless when their factual underpinnings are removed from view turning them in mere opinions (Van Poeck et al., 2016, p. 823).

The challenges of the Anthropocene as framed in this study could be understood as complex and contested and cannot ‘fit in the list of “mere” values, opinions, preferences, etc. not in the list of undisputable facts’ (Van Poeck et al., 2016, p. 808). Therefore, we in this study argue for a ‘non-dualistic’ theoretical concept (Van Poeck, 2019) such as matters of concern.

Latour (2018) did not provide a clear direction for education in particular. He views issues such as the challenges of the Anthropocene as ‘matters of concern’ rather than ‘matters of fact’. In this study, we follow Latour’s work (2004, 2010, 2018) and argue that the question of knowledge in science education as ‘matters of fact’ needs to be challenged. We further describe the use of the concept of ‘matters of concern’ as a tool for analysis in the section ‘The analytical process’.

Methods

The context of this study

This study is situated in a Swedish context of teacher education, drawing empirical data from students at the onset of their university-level programme. Most of these students have been through their upper-secondary school during the ‘Fridays for Future’ movement and have been confronted with daily media coverage of climate crises and environmental threats as headline news. Furthermore, their perspectives on the traditions and hegemonic discourses of ‘being a teacher’ remain unbounded by practical restraints. Indeed, two of the 14 participants had different backgrounds as engineers before starting to study to become a teacher. One participant had previous experience with teaching and mentoring. The remaining 11 participants started their teacher education either right after high school or after taking a gap year to try different university courses or interest areas. Seven of the participants had mathematics as their first teaching subject. Three participants had English, another three participants had Swedish and, one participant had physical education as their first teaching subject.

These teacher students are being prepared to teach the subject of general science for all (i.e. ‘Naturkunskap’ in Swedish) at the upper-secondary school level in Sweden. Naturkunskap is a mandatory school subject for all upper-secondary programs in Sweden, except for the specialised science-oriented programs, that offer more advanced science courses. The empirical material for this study derived from focus group discussions, capturing these teacher students’ meaning making, when discussing their future teaching roles in the context of the Anthropocene era.

Starting from the concept of Anthropocene

When the teacher students were at the beginning of their first course in science, which has a focus on physics and chemistry in everyday life, the first author of this paper worked as a guest lecturer for the chemistry section of the course. This facilitated the inclusion of an introductory lecture about the Anthropocene, providing the foundational context of this study. This process was repeated over the course of three autumn semesters, each with a new cohort of students. The lectures included descriptions of and perspectives on the Anthropocene, primarily drawing upon concepts such as planetary boundaries, the human impact on environment and climate, and graphical representations of the Great Acceleration (e.g. Crutzen & Stoermer, 2000; Rockström et al., 2009; Steffen et al., 2011, 2015). During the introduction, the teacher students freely asked questions. Also, optional focus group meetings were offered to the teacher students for follow-up discussions. Our analyses focus solely on these focus group discussions. The structure and content of the lectures were maintained as consistently as possible across the three different semesters.

The introductory lessons started with the students sharing science news, sourced from daily news outlets and websites, which they interpreted as relevant to the Anthropocene. For example, they discussed COVID-19 pandemic and plastic use, the acidification of forest soil in Sweden, and the extinction of species. Following these discussions, the lecture transitioned into a brief historical overview of the climate and prerequisites for human life during the historical time of Holocene. The Anthropocene was introduced in the context of (1) a new epoch, (2) the human impact on the planet, (3) the Great Acceleration, and (4) planetary boundaries and tipping points (Steffen et al., 2011, 2015, 2018). This content facilitated the visualisation of the intertwined social and historical perspectives of chemistry concepts. To discuss the planetary boundaries and the Great Acceleration, visual representations were demonstrated. The visualisations incorporated the acknowledgement of the scientists and their international research teams who developed these scientific models and representations. Upon conclusion of the lectures, the teacher students were invited to participate in the focus group discussions. These discussions were guided by the first author of this study based on a set of prepared questions.

Data collection through focus group discussions

The first author conducted the guided focus group discussions across five groups, with a total of 14 participants. Four of these groups consisted of three participants each, while the remaining group had two participants. Each group discussion lasted approximately one hour and was conducted in English. The guiding questions aimed to initiate a discussion and invite meaning making in relation to the concept of the Anthropocene, as well as to consider desirable teaching in light of the challenges of the Anthropocene. In this context, meaning making entails the teacher students’ dialogical engagement and elaboration within the focus groups, a process different from focus group ‘interviews’, which typically involve gathering data from more structured questions (Freeman, 2013). The discussions were initiated with general questions such as, ‘Considering the seminar on the Anthropocene, what did you understand from it?’, ‘What role do you think education has in relation to this perspective?’, and ‘What about the role of the teachers?’. Follow-up questions enabled clarifications and further in-depth conversations during the discussions. The conversations were transcribed verbatim and subsequently analysed through thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006).

Ethical considerations

Throughout the study, we meticulously adhered to ethical guidelines outlined by the Swedish Research Council (2017). The first author, when guest lecturing, clarified that the focus group discussions and data collection were part of a research study, not mandatory for the students and or a component of the course. After delivering the lectures on the Anthropocene to all teacher students attending the courses, the first author invited them to participate in the study, clearly stating its purpose. Although the participants were familiar with the first author from previous lectures, the distinct roles of the author as lecturer and as a researcher were clarified. Of five focus group discussions, four were conducted via a video call platform as the data collection period coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic.

The focus group discussions were conducted upon the verbal and written consent of the participants. The purpose of the research was also explained in writing, detailing legal information. Pseudonyms were randomly assigned during the transcription process, and no key exists to match the real identities of the participants with these pseudonyms, thereby ensuring anonymity in the transcriptions (Swedish Research Council, 2017). This study did not involve sensitive personal data (Swedish Research Council, 2017).

The analytical process

The analytical process was guided by Braun and Clarke’s (2006) thematic analysis framework, which was used to explore the teacher students’ process of meaning making. The coding process was performed abductively. Firstly, an open coding process was employed to structure the data in relation to the guiding questions of each focus group discussion. This was followed by a focused iterative process, where the analysis alternated between the empirical data and Latour’s (2004) concept of ‘matters of concern’ in relation to the Anthropocene. We focused on utterances related to how the Anthropocene concept was approached by the teacher students, in order to pay attention to how they perceived the Anthropocene as something that might raise new thoughts about education. Utterances expressing concerns and attachments related to the knowledge presented in the introductory lesson about the Anthropocene were of specific interest. Examples of this were identified when the students related living in the Anthropocene to emotions, discussed matters concerning relationships between emissions and daily life actions and reformulated what they interpreted as important concerning being future teachers, teaching science and chemistry. This focus made us explore what the students expressed as important when valuing the Anthropocene as an overarching perspective of education. In this process, Latour’s ‘matters of concern’ worked as a fruitful lens to identify utterances of interest. Non-dualistic utterances, in line with Latour (2004, 2010, 2018), were of specific interest. In such utterances, matters of fact as objective science concepts are valued as representations which need to embrace contextualisation to gain value in real life. After the transcripts were individually coded, the researchers met on a regular basis to discuss and compare their codes, preliminary categories, and themes. Illustrative utterances that represent the breadth and specific meaning of each category were selected.

In a closer view, this process consisted of several steps. While not strictly detailed, the analytical process largely followed the main phases of the original Braun and Clarke framework (2006, p. 87). The phases were briefly performed as follows: The analysis commenced with the first and second authors carefully reading the transcripts several times, to gain an overall familiarisation with the data. We then generated the initial codes, through an open coding process to find common meanings and different views in relation to each guiding question of the discussion, and for each focus group separately. This was mostly done inductively. By comparing the initial codes from different focus groups, we then proceeded to search for common categories throughout the entire data.

Subsequently, we sharpened the focus. We specifically looked for utterances expressing new ways of valuing and acting in relation to the Anthropocene. In this part of the analysis, we identified different categories expressing how teaching in the Anthropocene was discussed as related to actions of concern, i.e. ‘matters of concern’. We also paid particular attention to utterances relating to chemistry. We reviewed the codes and the categories to reach a consensus on common interpretations. In this phase, we also engaged in detailed discussions about the categories and revised their names. The results were finally organised into two main themes, each with distinct categories, which will be presented in the next section.

Analyses and results

In the following analyses, the results illustrate how the students make meaning in relation to their future teaching after being introduced to the Anthropocene. In general, the results depict how the teacher students struggle with their positions in tension. The first and more personal position reflects how the knowledge about the Anthropocene as a lens for ‘matters of concern’, affects the teacher students as an existential worry. The second position emerges from ‘matters of concern’ focusing on how this knowledge may be used to empower and encourage their future students, as they envision their professional teacher roles. Consequently, while being ‘overwhelmed’ and worried by the new perspectives, they are also convinced that they need to use this knowledge to encourage their future students. This is manifested in Theme 1: The Anthropocene evoking personal emotions as ‘matters of concern’, and Theme 2: Approaching educational content as ‘matters of concern’ in the Anthropocene. The results show issues related to why, what, and how questions of education and reveal complexity and tensions in relation to ‘matters of concern’, which will be further elaborated in the conclusion and discussion sections. We now proceed by presenting each theme and its respective categories.

Theme 1: The Anthropocene evoking personal emotions as ‘matters of concern’

The complexity unveiled by the Anthropocene is expressed in a multi-faceted way by the teacher students in the follow-up focus group discussions. The introduction to the planetary boundaries and the diagrams of the Great Acceleration presented a novel way of visualising environmental facts in relation to scientific knowledge and human actions, which was a new experience for most of the students.

Scientific knowledge as trajectories towards an alarming future and experienced urgency

The visualisation of the Anthropocene elicited some strong reactions among the teacher students:

Jenny:

I was kind of scared to be honest. Both for myself and for my … next generations to come. Just for the world in general. It was kind of scary presentation, I have to say.

Anna:

I wasn’t aware of being so close … we are really close to all the limits. Some of them we already extended. We already … passed them. Some is more than urgent. We have to find a solution right now! I was like okay … If we start, we can rescue it. And some of them, we have to start, now, now. We have to find a solution as soon as possible!

Jenny:

Those things. They are running out fast. I didn’t know about those things. And like how … When you showed the diagram … The really big … There was such a big and steep usage of … No! The emissions of carbon dioxide or methane … Those diagrams … It was weird to see it. Like that I haven’t seen it like that on paper before. You know, it’s always, yes we started using a lot more oil and coal … but I never seen them on the paper visually.

Anna:

Anthropocene … I have seen it on the news … the discussion about if we don’t stop using different things how it will affect the environment and the climate … it’s now when I’m older and starting to think about these and when I got my son, I am more worried about these things because I think what will happen with his generation is … even … will they even be able to live on this planet or we will destroy it completely?

The visualisations and diagrams representing the Anthropocene as a concept are affecting the students on a personal level. They express feelings of fear and worry pertaining to their own lives, future generations, and ‘the world in general’. They further convey a sense of urgency and the sensation of time running out concerning the necessity for human action. They emphasise the imperative for action towards change.

Scientific knowledge as trajectories of uncertainty

The introductory lesson prompted the students to reflect and critically evaluate the existential uncertainty that may come with living in the Anthropocene. It evoked feelings of frustration due to the complexity and ambiguity of ‘not knowing what we’re getting into’. The Anthropocene brings an unknown future that we don’t know how to respond to:

Nils:

… it is like a lottery; we don’t know what we're getting. But we’re getting there. We’re crossing those tipping points and it’s ultimately […] going to be so very different that we don’t know how to respond to it, and we don’t know what to get of it, and we don’t know whether we as species will be able to keep sustainable life under those conditions.

Here, Nils refers to tipping points, a concept presented in the context of planetary boundaries and the resilience of ecosystems. He suggests that crossing these tipping points will mean it is not possible to know the future consequences. The future is not straightforward, and it might not be possible to prepare for it. The cause-and-effect relationship, entangled with science discourses, is uncertain because it is impossible to identify the whole problem. Consequently, it is complicated to identify a solution or appropriate response. Hence, the scientific model of the planetary boundaries exposes our vulnerability, leading the students to experience an uncertain future where humanity’s path to sustainability remains unclear.

Scientific knowledge entangled in a world of complex interactions

The discussions progress beyond the visualisation of the planetary boundaries as ‘hard facts’ to embrace wider worldviews This is achieved through attachments as relational interactions of biogeochemical systems, economic systems, politics, and social relations:

Karin:

[…] it’s a huge problem. I think that the environmental question is so huge because it impacts everything in the society […] from biodiversity loss to the water or ocean acidification and so on. […] It’s a social question. It’s economic, it’s political. It’s everything. So […] it will be very complex to understand it. So, it’s hard to know what […] can I do to make some difference.

It seems difficult to grasp an individual action in relation to the complexity and scope of the problems. Therefore, it is equally challenging to predict which actions might lead towards desired directions. Karin expands the biogeochemical systems of the planetary boundaries by entangling them with the economic and political spheres, thereby addressing the question of how to make a difference as an individual. Karin continues:

I think we are all involved in this. Because what we as individuals do will affect how the ones who own this big companies will act. So […] it seems like […] those in power can affect the world most, but in some ways, it is also every individual […] who can make the leaders take other choices for a better future … 

The utterance above articulates how the discussion undulates around responsibility of acting for change ‘for a better future’. It addresses the different power structures from an individual level and a corporate level, and how individuals might influence ‘leaders’ to act.

Summary of the theme: The Anthropocene evoking personal emotions as ‘matters of concern’

When discussing the introduction of planetary boundaries, the teacher students in this study express emotions of worry and uncertainty about how the earth system will react, what the future holds and the potential of action for a better future. The scientific knowledge becomes multi-relational in the discussions and the presupposed causality and possibility to identify effective actions become blurred. Furthermore, the ability to predict who in society might bear (most) responsibility for taking impactful actions is subject to constant re-evaluation. The students are overwhelmed by the complexity and the pressing need to act for a change, yet they are unsure of how to proceed. The students express emotions of uncertainty, fear, and a sense of being powerless.

Theme 2: Approaching educational content as ‘matters of concern’ in the Anthropocene

The planetary boundaries were discussed as an important model to make visible the scientific overview of the planet’s state and urgency, in relation to life-sustaining processes. At the same time, the different roles of knowledge ‘as matters of concern’ in relation to the Anthropocene were detailed and discussed.

Chemistry knowledge to make meaning of environmental processes

While considering and discussing the presentation of the planetary boundaries, the teacher students articulated that planetary boundaries may be more connected to chemistry, compared to other school science subjects:

Anna:

Many of the points there [visualisation of the planetary boundaries in the presentation] was connected to chemistry. So … perhaps it’s more connected to chemistry.

Jenny:

Yes, I think that learning the chemistry behind what’s happening everywhere, talking about Anthropocene, could help you understand better why it is happening, how it is happening […] [That] put[s] a little spark in your head. [Therefore] when you see stuff on the street in everyday life you can go ‘all right that’s what happening in the exhaust gases … That’s what’s coming out of that car’s exhaust pipe … ’ or whatever. That it is reacting with ‘that’ substance … And when they react with ‘that’ substance, it creates ‘that’ substance or product.

Marie:

[…] understanding the mechanisms of how the world works. I feel it is a way of field work. Including getting answers to the small everyday questions. It is kind of fascinating how everything can be explained on a molecular level. And in relation to the Anthropocene, I absolutely think it’s like vital that you understand [carbon compounds] […] to understand global warming for example.

Chemistry knowledge is articulated as a possible tool to better understand the daily processes occurring on a microscale, which ‘puts a little spark in your head’. This ‘spark’ is viewed as an opportunity to further understand the processes of global warming in relation to everyday contexts.

This argumentation draws on the ability to transition between micro and macro scale, between everyday experiences and science, including chemistry knowledge as explanatory tools. As shown in the utterances above, viewing car exhaust emissions as a pathway towards ‘an understanding’ of a much wider process presupposes the possibility of referring to the chemical processes on a microscale, and how this may be of concern in relation to the atmosphere, climate change, and the Anthropocene. Chemical knowledge of processes is presented as tools to reveal why and how certain everyday activities may become embedded as ‘matters of concern’.

Chemistry knowledge as materiality that matters

The teacher students discuss the merits of science and chemistry as an onto-epistemology that potentially allows for direct experience of material processes, thereby enabling one to empirically ‘see how this is happening’:

Robert:

Science is one of the few subjects where we get to look at this empirical data directly with students. Like when I teach grammar up it’s going to be harder for me to explain to them why these grammar rules are set. I could probably go into it but it’s gonna … it’s all based on other theories … While chemistry, we can literally look at, like see how this is happening.

Hanna:

… teach them the difference between ‘pure facts’ like ‘pure chemistry’ and how it can affect the world in different ways and how things can change … I think that’s a big part of teaching science. That not everything is … it’s not black and white.

The difference between teaching through ‘pure chemistry’ and a more contextualised approach to teaching is discussed. Teaching chemistry as a series of ongoing processes that affect the material world in various ways is identified as ‘a big part of teaching science’. Consequently, understanding how science processes affect and shape the world’s ontologies in different ways is recognised as a means to foster an understanding that ‘not everything is black and white’ in science. In other words, a more contextualised science, which acknowledges science as material processes that affect the world, might be crucial as ‘matters of concern’ when teaching in the Anthropocene.

Chemistry and science knowledge as part of a relational world

Some of the utterances made by teacher students that stand out in the discussion, involve challenging the ‘taken for granted’ relation to the world. They discuss how to encourage alternative perspectives to challenge this static viewpoint:

Nils:

I think it’s very important to address these issues from different perspectives and from micro and macroscale in the Swedish education […] I might even be starting off with a poem about something in nature … of the movement of the leaves or anything and then put into perspective that this is nothing granted anymore. You can’t take this for … for a fact that you would be able to enjoy these things just say at any time … 

The relationships between themselves as teachers and their future students also emerge as an issue of concern in the discussions:

Albert:

Yeah … I think also to be a democratic leader in the classroom, so the students don’t feel you are like authoritarian that only says how it is, without them being able to question it. Yeah, because I think one big reason why many thinks like climate change isn’t real is because they see, as you said before, the scientists to be some kind of elite saying how it should be without them being able to question it. And I think that develops into a scepticism against climate change.

David:

I will not focus on maybe the amounts of knowledge if that makes sense. Because I feel like a lot of people are already drilled into their head that environment matters because we hear it all very often in school. And still there are people who refuse to listen. So maybe a different strategy to actually make them listen would be more appropriate. So maybe not just include more. Let’s include differently.

Jenny:

I think maybe the science programs get too focused on the science itself, on a micro level, and doesn’t think about macro level. Like the social context of everything we learn.

These utterances contain a critique rooted in the students’ earlier experiences with authoritarian science teaching and the challenges of presenting environmental issues as unquestionable issues confirmed by the ‘elite’ of knowledgeable persons in society. They also express how they, as students, have continually been taught about environmental issues that matter. Therefore, they advocate for alternative ways to approach issues of concern and for a narrative where the connection to context and place is of interest. Similarly, the social contexts of what is described as ‘everything we learn’ are recognised as ‘matters of concern’ in the discussions.

In the utterance below, Maja argues for the importance of honesty with students about a challenging future with changes that are not easy ‘to just stop’. She brings forward the importance of countering a simplistic, solution-focused education, and instead emphasises hope as a means of living with the problems that are not easy ‘to just stop’, yet still maintaining the capacity to ‘make it good’:

Maja:

Because that’s the thing, you don’t wanna lie to the kid. You don’t want to say: It’s probably going to be fine if you just, make sure to not buy plastic bags. We […] need to be honest with the issues and we need to be honest with [that] there might be a lot of changes, but also the hope. We might not be able to say that the hope is […] we can just stop this. Maybe instead, we need to say: The hope is […] even if we can't stop this, we can still make it good for everyone … If we want that … 

Summary of the theme: Approaching educational content as ‘matters of concern’ in the Anthropocene

The focus of educational knowledge in relation to Anthropocene is not primarily presented as specific factual chemistry and science knowledge. Rather, the teacher students do approach ‘chemistry facts’ as ‘matters of concern’ to develop a wider understanding of process knowledge. Knowledge and facts are emphasised as context-dependent and related to everyday experiences. The analysis reveals the importance of how they, as future teachers in the Anthropocene, relate and teach to turn certain facts and knowledge into ‘matters of concern’. This importance is exemplified through various means, such as embedding it in a poem, clarifying it as political, and so on. Hence, the approach to science and chemistry ‘knowledge’ as future teachers, is connected to the ability to visualise relations to the experienced world beyond ‘pure facts’ (i.e. matters of fact). Facts are intertwined with different views and concerns and are not just statements by ‘an authority’ (i.e. science teacher). This view is also shown to guide ‘matters of concern’. This is crucial for desirable democratic teaching in relation to the Anthropocene, as well as for addressing an honest (not utopian) vision of the future.

Conclusions and discussions

Through our analysis of how the teacher students make meaning of teaching science in the light of the Anthropocene, we identified two primary themes in tension related to ‘matters of concern’ as summarised below:

• Theme 1: The Anthropocene evoking personal emotions as ‘matters of concern’

  • Scientific knowledge as trajectories towards an alarming future and experienced urgency

  • Scientific knowledge as trajectories of uncertainty

  • Scientific knowledge entangled in a world of complex interactions

• Theme 2: Approaching educational content as ‘matters of concern’ in the Anthropocene

  • Chemistry knowledge to make meaning of environmental processes

  • Chemistry knowledge as materiality that matters

  • Chemistry and science knowledge as part of a relational world

Theme 1 illustrates how the teacher students expressed feelings of urgency as ‘time is running out’, along with uncertainty and fear, when faced with the Anthropocene in this context. The literature (e.g. Ferguson, 2022; Ojala, 2021; Ojala et al., 2021) has well-documented the expression of negative emotions in response to the challenges of our era. Although most teachers view that emotions such as worry (Gyberg et al., 2020; Ojala, 2021) may be hindering and lead to student inactivity, emotions such as anger have been shown to also catalyse engagement (Ojala, 2021). However, articulating negative emotions and confronting them in a constructive environment can serve as a means to process anxiety and promote engagement and action (Ojala, 2021; Sund, 2016). In our study, the visualisations in the presentations, such as planetary boundaries, and the Great Acceleration, were cited as elements that evoked a sense of urgency and fear. Even though these teacher students seemed to be well-versed in sustainability issues and climate change, the discussion surrounding the visualisations of the Anthropocene through the planetary boundaries and the Great Acceleration led them to experience a sense of urgency they had not felt in the same way before. This also resulted in the teacher students expressing emotions of uncertainty, fear, and powerlessness. In line with Ojala (2021), the follow-up focus group discussions may be seen as an important strategy for addressing these emotions in a constructive manner. These discussions may also have helped the students sharpen their focus while elaborating on how to reformulate science education in relation to these experiences.

Theme 2 illustrates how teacher students approach educational content when they assume the role of future teachers. This theme is driven by the question: What does it mean to have considerable doubts about the future on a personal level, yet still adopt the role of an inspiring teacher instilling hope for the future in their future students? When the participants engaged in discussions from the standpoint of future teachers (see theme 2), they valued teaching the knowledge as a way to promote more holistic views. This approach to knowledge may be seen as a form of scaffolding, helping their future students navigate a world that is intimidating and showing complex relations and entanglements that are difficult to comprehend. The teacher students emphasise that this role as a teacher is an ‘honest’ one, to continually communicate the possibility of making things good in the world even if it is not easy (or even possible) to presuppose a concrete way of acting for ‘sustainability’ or specific sustainable choices, to make a ‘real difference’. This somewhat affirmative attitude contrasts with the results of other studies which show that in-service teachers tend to avoid discussing what an unsustainable world might look like in the future (Gyberg et al., 2020). Instead, other studies show that there is often a focus on school knowledge that explains underlying phenomena, coupled with a ‘solution-oriented’ teaching approach. This could indicate that the teacher students in this study are attempting to disrupt a more common discourse that treats sustainability ‘only’ as a learning context or through a more normative and individual behavioural change approach involving predefined lifestyle changes (e.g. Hasslöf et al., 2014). Instead, they appear to find it important to present knowledge as ‘matters of concern’ to be reflected upon in a complex world. It also seems important for the students to rely on teaching as a way to consider how to make things continually ‘better’. In line with teacher students’ views, this interpretation of chemistry knowledge as ‘matters of concern’ suggests that chemistry knowledge is an important and trustworthy tool for understanding models such as planetary boundaries, thereby enhancing our understanding of why and how we need to transform. At this intersection of deeply existential, emotional issues of the Anthropocene and the reality of being a science teacher, a scientifically objective view of knowledge seems to be proposed as one method for uncertainty. In this way, the teacher students in this study have demonstrated how a theoretical concept, as Latour’s (2010) ‘matters of concern’, can serve as a contextualising tool in the complex context we refer to as ‘reality’.

Implications for science teacher education

This study takes place in a small setting with a limited number of participants in a Swedish science teacher education program, where teachers’ professional scholarship and the practical art of teaching are framed as didaktik (Wickman et al., 2020; Yavuzkaya et al., 2022). Therefore, our findings generate perspectives in relation to potential considerations in science teacher education.

Teacher education considers both teacher students and future students of these current teacher students. Figure 2 illustrates how teacher education can be characterised by a ‘double didactic triangle’ (Ellebæk et al., 2022). The representation on the right is the traditional didactic triangle for a specific curriculum subject. When undergoing education to become a schoolteacher, the teacher student concurrently occupies a role of a student within the didactic triangle of the teacher education campus. Certain aspects of teacher education, particularly in Sweden, are practice-oriented and take place within the professional arena of a school. Transformations occur between these triangles, particularly in terms of the content (Hudson et al., 2023), as well as in other aspects, such as the transformation from being a teacher student to a (becoming) schoolteacher during the course of teacher education.

Figure 2. The two praxis arenas of teacher education: the campus arena (university) to the left and the profession arena (school) to the right, each represented with their respective ‘didactic triangle’. The figure is translated from Danish and slightly modified based on a figure in (Ellebæk et al., 2022, p. 12). ‘Transfer’ in the original figure has here been changed to ‘Transformation’.

This article presents an analysis of the focus group discussions, with a primary focus on how science teacher students articulate about their future teaching, particularly chemistry related, from an Anthropocene perspective. The discussions specifically delve into the content of the school subject ‘Naturkunskap’. Given the teacher students’ perspectives probed by the introductory lesson illustrating planetary boundaries (Figure 1) and the Great Acceleration, a challenging question can be raised: What contents could be considered in science teacher education in the Anthropocene? The views in tension expressed by the teacher students presented in this study may challenge taken-for-granted (subject) teaching in teacher education. Furthermore, the teacher students in this study, show an initial trajectory towards promoting a more contextualised and interdisciplinary approach in their future role as science teachers. In line with Coles and colleagues (2017), we suggest that incorporating the perspectives of the Anthropocene into teacher education may serve as a potential for teacher educators to consider the entanglements of the world’s complex systems and struggles of shifting positions as individuals, as teacher students, and as professional teachers. As suggested by Kahn and Zeidler (2016), historically, traditional science teaching has primarily focused on conceptual understanding.

As an example of interdisciplinary approaches in science education, environmental humanities could be a helpful supporting field (Hutchings, 2014; O’Gorman et al., 2019). This field discusses and seeks to understand concepts and ideas such as sustainability issues in the Anthropocene era, planetary boundaries, different sustainability views, and ecological literacy. We look forward to participating in future research that addresses the empirical and theoretical development and revision of didactic models and pedagogical thinking. These models and thoughts should encapsulate the challenges associated with being and becoming a science teacher in the Anthropocene. The uncertain and crisis-ridden future calls for an openness to ‘matters of concern’, new approaches to the present, and a commitment to re-examination. This process should be integral to our way of being in the world as science (teacher) educators and world citizens.

Ethical approval

The ethical guidelines of the Swedish Research Council were adhered to during the research study and writing of this manuscript. This study was not subject to ethical review since it did not involve sensitive personal data.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Studies in Science, Environmental and Mathematics Education (SISEME) research group for their valuable feedback on this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Merve Yavuzkaya

Merve Yavuzkaya is a PhD student in Science Education at Malmö University’s Faculty of Education and Society. Her research focuses on school chemistry knowledge in relation to the ethico-sociopolitical challenges of the Anthropocene. She specifically works within the areas of science education, curriculum theory, continental Didaktik, teacher education, and environmental and sustainability education (ESE).

Helen Hasslöf

Helen Hasslöf is a senior lecturer in Science Education at the Faculty of Education and Society at Malmö University. Her research interests focus on science education research, environmental and sustainability issues, outdoor education, Anthropocene and climate change education. She is also part of the research program Disciplinary Literacy and Inclusive Teaching (LIT) at Malmö University.

Jesper Sjöström

Jesper Sjöström is a full professor of Science Education at the Faculty of Education and Society at Malmö University. Three important concepts in his research are Vision III of scientific literacy and science education, eco-reflexive Bildung and didaktik. Related to this, he is interested in Bildung-oriented didaktik models and modelling as well as in the philosophy of science education. An important framing for him is the Anthropocene era and related global environmental and socio-political issues.