Stockholm university

Per-Olof Wickman

Research

My research interest is in didactics defined as teachers’ professional science. Within this framework I develop conceptual models that education researchers and teachers can use for analysis in planning, realizing and assessing lessons with regard to content, methods and the student group taught. My research is mainly within the field of school science education, but many of the models developed are more general and have been adopted for other subjects, educational levels and areas. Together with schools and fellow researchers I have advanced models to (a) help analyzing how the interactions in the classroom translate into the learning of specific content (practical epistemology analysis), (b) how students and teachers can organize the continuity between the different classroom activities and purposes to support the progression of student learning (modeling organizing purposes), and (c) how teachers can support and aid the constitution of students’ interest for the subject taught (modeling the aesthetics of the subject). The models are tried out together with teachers to make them more useful.

I am director of Science Education research at the Department of Mathematics and Science Education (MND), coordinator of the Graduate Research School in Subject Didactics for teachers in collaboration with municipalities in the Stockholm region, and coordinator of the Graduate Research School Didactic Modeling in Science Education financed by the Swedish Research Council.

Selected publications

  • Hamza, K., Palm, O., Palmqvist, J., Piqueras, J., & Wickman, P.-O. (in press). Hybridization of practices in teacher-researcher collaboration. European Educational Research Journal.
  • Hamza, K., Piqueras, J., Wickman, P.-O. & Angelin, M. (in press). Who owns the content and who runs the risk? Dynamics of teacher change in teacher-researcher collaboration. Research in Science Teaching.
  • Ünsal, Z., Jakobson, B., Molander, B.-O. & Wickman, P.-O. (in press). Language use in a multi-lingual class: A study of the relation between bilingual students' languages and their meaning-making in science. Research in Science Education.
  • Andrée, M., Wickman, P-O. & Lager-Nyqvist, L. (2017). Remembering as instructional work in the science classroom. In Å. Mäkitalo, P. Linell, & R. Säljö (Eds.) Memory practices and learning: Experiential, institutional, and sociocultural perspectives. (Book series: Advances in cultural psychology: constructing human development) (pp. ). Information Age Publishing, Charlotte, NC.
  • Wickman, P.-O. (2017). Back to the drawing board-examining the philosophical foundations of educational research on aesthetics and emotions. In Bellocchi, A., Otrel-Cass, K. & Quigley, C. (Eds.) Beyond cognition in science education: considering the role of emotions, well-being, and aesthetics (pp. 9-37). Springer, New York
  • Ünsal, Z., Jakobson, B., Molander, B.-O. & Wickman, P.-O. (2016) Science education in a bilingual class: problematising a translational practice. Cultural Studies of Science Education. On line first DOI 10.1007/s11422-016-9747-3
  • Anderhag, P., Wickman, P.-O., Bergqvist, K., Jakobson, B., Hamza, K. & Säljö, R. (2016). Why do secondary school students lose their interest in science? Or does it never emerge? A possible and overlooked explanation. Science Education, 100(5), 791-813.
  • Arvola Orlander, A., Todd, S. & Wickman, P.-O. (2015). Becoming a woman and a man in secondary school practice. Nordic Studies in Education, 35(3­-4), 233-250.
  • Jakobson, B. & Wickman, P.-O. (2015). What difference does art make in science? A comparative study of meaning-making at elementary school. Interchange, 46(4), 323-343. DOI 10.1007/s10780-015-9262-6.
  • Anderhag, P., Wickman, P.-O. & Hamza, K. M. (2015). How can teaching make a difference to students' interest in science? Including Bourdieuan field analysis. Cultural Studies of Science Education,25(2), 377-380.
  • Anderhag, P., Wickman, P.-O. & Hamza, K. M. (2015). Signs of taste for science: a methodology for studying the constitution of interest in the science classroom. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 10(2), 339-368. DOI 10.1007/s11422-014-9641-9
  • Ingerman, Å. & Wickman, P.-O. (2015). Towards a teachers' professional discipline: Shared responsibility for didactic models in research and practice. In Burnard, P., Apelgren, B.-M. & Cabaroglu, N. (Eds.) Transformative Teacher Research: Theory and Practice for the C21st (pp 167-179). Sense Publisher, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
  • Wickman, P.-O. (2014). En pragmatisk didaktik. In Jakobson, B., Lundegård, I. & Wickman, P.-O. (Eds.) Lärande i handling: en pragmatisk didaktik (pp. 17-24). Studentlitteratur, Lund. [In Swedish: Pragmatic didactics]
  • Wickman, P.-O. & Östman, L. (2014). Att göra lärandet synligt. In Jakobson, B., Lundegård, I. & Wickman, P.-O. (Eds.) Lärande i handling: en pragmatisk didaktik (pp. 37-46). Studentlitteratur, Lund. [In Swedish: Making learning visible]
  • Firozi, F. & Wickman, P.-O. (2014). En metod för planering och formativ bedömning. In Jakobson, B., Lundegård, I. & Wickman, P.-O. (Eds.) Lärande i handling: en pragmatisk didaktik (pp. 79-88). Studentlitteratur, Lund. [In Swedish: A method for planning and formative assessment]
  • Jakobson, B., Lundegård, I. & Wickman, P.-O. (2014). Lärande i handling: en pragmatisk didaktik. Studentlitteratur, Lund.
  • Wickman, P.-O. (2014). Teaching learning progressions: An international perspective. In: Lederman, N. G. & Abell, S. K.(Eds.), Handbook of Research on Science Education, Volume II (pp. 145-163). Routledge, New York
  • Anderhag, P., Hamza, K. M. & Wickman, P.-O. (2014). What can a Teacher do to Support Students' Interest in Science? A Study of the Constitution of Taste in a Science Classroom. Research in Science Education, 45(5), 749-784. DOI 10.1007/s11165-014-9448-4
  • Östman, L. & Wickman, P.-O. (2014). A pragmatic approach on epistemology, teaching and learning. Science Education, 98 (3), 375-382.
  • Johansson, A.-M. & Wickman, P.-O. (2013). Selektiva traditioner i grundskolans tidigare år: Lärares betoningar av kvalitéer i naturvetenskapsundervisningen. Nordic Studies in Science Education, 9(1), 50-65.
  • Wickman, P.-O. (2012). L'expérience esthétique dans l'enseignement des sciences: Apprentissage et production de sens comme discours situé et action. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes.
  • Kelly, G.J., McDonald, S., & Wickman, P. -O., (2012). Science learning and epistemology. In K. B. J. Fraser, K. G. Tobin & C. J. McRobbie (Eds.), Second International Handbook of Science Education (pp. 281–291). Dordrecht: Springer.
  • Wickman, P.-O. (2012). A comparison between Practical Epistemology Analysis and some schools in French didactics. Education & Didactique, 6(2), 145–159.
  • Wickman, P.-O. (2012). Using pragmatism to develop didactics in Sweden. Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft, 15,483–501.
  • Wickman, P.-O. (2012). How can conceptual schemes change teaching? Cultural Studies of Science Education, 7, 129–136.
  • Wickman, P.-O, Liberg, C. & Östman, L. (2012). Transcending science: scientific literacy and bildung for the 21st century. D. Jorde & J. Dillon (Eds.) Science Education Research and Practice in Europe (pp. 39–61). Rotterdam, Sense Publishers.
  • Johansson, A.-M. & Wickman, P.-O. (2011). A pragmatist approach to learning progressions. In Hudson, B. & Meyer, M. A. (Eds.) Beyond Fragmentation: Didactics, Learning, and Teaching in Europe, pp. 47–59. Leverkusen, Germany, Barbara Budrich Publishers.
  • Wickman, P.-O., & Ligozat, F. (2011). Scientific literacy as action: consequences for content progression. In: Linder, C., Östman, L., Roberts, D.A., Wickman, P.-O., Erickson, G. & MacKinnon, A. Exploring the Landscape of Scientific Literacy, pp. 145-159. New York: Routledge.
  • Wickman, P.-O. (2006). Aesthetic Experience in Science Education: Learning and Meaning-Making as Situated Talk and Action. New York: Routledge.
  • Wickman, P.-O. (2004). The practical epistemologies of the classroom: a study of laboratory work. Science Education, 88, 325-344.
  • Wickman, P.-O. & Östman, L. (2002). Learning as discourse change: a sociocultural mechanism. Science Education 86, 601-623.