Traces of Bildung in Upper Secondary Science Education: A Critical Investigation of Chemistry Teachers’ Orientation Towards Promoting Bildung in Chemistry Education

Abstract

AbstractThere is a need of a component in science education that can orient students to the complexity characterising the natural sciences position in relation to a globalised risk society and the Anthropocene. Recently, the implications of the German philosophical and educational construct Bildung have been discussed in this regard. In this paper, we investigate in what aspect an orientation towards promoting Bildung manifests in Swedish upper secondary school chemistry teachers’ visions and views for their teaching. In view of the reported impact of neoliberal policy in narrowing the scope of education, with such narrowing possibly excluding dimensions of philosophical-ethical reflection in science teaching, we also investigate in what aspect economic goals associated with neoliberalism might hinder a Bildung orientation in the vision and views of the five chemistry teachers that were interviewed. Results revealed “Bildung-related elements” to be present in the chemistry teaching visions of all the teachers, however without strong Bildung orientation. Significantly, four of the five teachers reported contextual factors consistent with the impact of neoliberal policy in education as marginalising their work to realise Bildung-related elements. In addition, factors outside of teachers’ awareness were also found to marginalise Bildung. Common for all five teachers were neoliberal values at the level of teachers’ implicit beliefs, with our analysis pointing to the possibility that teachers view Bildung-related elements in their chemistry teaching as commodifiable entities. We argue that these implicit beliefs disempower the teachers in relation to a teaching praxis that seeks to guide students towards their own Bildung.