In the technology classroom, practical problem-solving activities require interaction between teacher and students. To explore these interactions, we use Joint Action Theory of Didactics (JATD). Joint actions occur within a didactical system where teacher, students and content are understood as an undividable whole. Of particular interest is how the teacher interacts with students and the milieu: the objects, processes and concepts needed to solve the problem. We regard this combination of the students and milieu (the student-milieu) as a unit with which the teacher interacts. Creating joint action relies on joint attention, joint affordances and common ground. Moreover, we use the concept didactical moves to describe how the teacher facilitates joint action to create opportunities for students to interact with the milieu. We analyse video-recorded observations of a group of students, aged 14, who are working with a practical problem, building a bridge model. Our results indicate that the teacher's didactical moves attempt to achieve an integration of students' procedural and conceptual understanding. However, the teacher overlooks the need to establish common ground related to certain aspects of the milieu, and there are few joint affordances in relation to central concepts among the students. We argue that JATD is appropriate when analysing and reflecting on practical problem solving and teachers' strategies for handling interactions with the student-milieu.

Abstract.One of the purposes of science teacher education is to provide prospective teachers with a solid foundation from which to educate scientifically literate pupils. It is reasonable to assume that curriculum documents provide opportunities as well as imposing restraints on the interpreted, enacted, and experienced curriculum. Hence, we analyse Norwegian national curricula documents for science teacher education and lower secondary education to explore how they communicate in terms of positions on scientific literacy: we explore how knowledge, knowledge processes, and values related to knowledge are configured in the documents. Our analysis is a theoretically driven content analysis inspired by discourse analysis, through which we explore the configuration of the concepts and arguments in use in the curricula. Although both curricula emphasize a similar body of knowledge, the teacher education curriculum lacks the more elaborate approaches to communication and the nature of science (NOS) that are found in the school science curriculum. Moreover, both are concerned with science as enculturation but otherwise provide different arguments for learning science. Prospective teachers might thus be ill-equipped to address vital epistemic aspects of school science.

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Examples play important roles in science teaching as vehicles for both conceptual learning and affective engagement. In this article, we develop an analytical tool that deconstructs and deliberates on the use of examples in school science. This analytical tool approaches examples as part of social interactions in the classroom. The tool can be used to deconstruct the use of examples by identifying the relations among the actors, the types of knowledge and how knowledge is communicated. The tool then facilitates a deliberation on examples' epistemic affordance -their potential for pupils' learning. We apply the analytical tool on empirical materials from two classrooms where teachers and pupils (aged 15-16) work with examples connected to evolution, genes and traits. We presume that if this analytical tool is applied on authentic classroom materials in pre-service training, student teachers will benefit when they design or re-use examples in their own future teaching practices.

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