Rationale

Environment and health have always been important

learning areas in science education and are gradually

becoming more important. Not only are they socially

highly relevant regarding sustainable development

discourses, but also and particularly they are close to

students’ interests and needs and can help to open

up science to individually relevant questions,

especially also for girls.

Nevertheless, these issues have often been

neglected in science education research. This may

also be a question of methodological difficulties.

Traditional pre-test and post-test experimental design

approaches do presumably not adequately meet the

needs of learners and teachers. When it comes to

these issues, it is not so much the question of

measuring immediate effects of elaborated teaching

procedures, but much more the interest to

understand how learners interact with complex

issues, what concept images of the environment and

health they have, how they deal with controversial

perspectives in these fields, and what images they

have of sciences in this context, and how and why

those images have emerged. Researching those

ontological and epistemological questions asks for

approaches actively involving learners and teachers,

for example by participatory research designs.

Participants in such research are encouraged to

develop learning settings into reflective science

classrooms, where students’ questions and

perceptions are starting points for thoughtful activities

and growing awareness of multiple perspectives on

complex issues.

The conference will offer keynote lectures by

researchers who are prominent in the field, as well as

a broad variety of workshops, where both advanced

and young researchers present their research studies for

in-depth discussion.