The aim of this paper is to describe what scientific seeing is possible for the students to develop while participating in a certain laboratory based teaching activity. What is required to observe something in an observation? How does the teacher orchestrate the talk of the experiments? The paper presents some early findings from a three-year comparative study, funded by the Swedish Research Council, where the practice of teaching chemistry in Finno-Swedish and Swedish classroom are to be analysed. The underpinning idea of the overarching research project is that we need to know more about the possible differences in the teaching practices in order to get a better understanding of why Finnish students perform significantly better in the internationals PISA studies as compared to what for example Swedish students do (see e.g. Stigler & Hiebert, 1999). The data used in this paper consist of video and tape-recorded classroom observations of two lessons in a Finno-Swedish junior high school (grade eight). The chemistry content in the two experiments is about ions, ionic bonding and solubility. The two experiments resulted in different precipitates that were generated by mixing different ion solutions. During the beginning of the experiments the students are encouraged to examine and look at the solutions but they are not told how it is possible to examine a solution. Later, when the students observe what happens when they mix the solutions they say ”it falls out” and it looks like milk. The teacher does not highlight that this observation of a muddy or milky solution is in this case a consequence of that a chemical reaction has occurred. A new substance has been formed very quickly and can be observed in this case by a muddy or milky formation of the solution.

The recordings and copies of students’ writing and drawings were analysed by using a two-folded strategy. Firstly, two different laboratory experiments were analysed in order to identify the potential chemistry content. Secondly, the analysis was focusing towards what the teacher directed the students’ awareness. The analysis was theoretically framed by a socio-cultural perspective implying that what we see is not given by the object – instead we need to learn to see in specific ways (Bergkvist & Säljö, 1994). The perspective indicates that it is through the students’ and the teachers’ talk around the laboratory activities that science learning can occur (Mortimer & Scott, 2003).

The result indicates that the teacher mostly directed the students’ awareness towards the macro level – physical features as yellow and translucent – that occurred during the chemistry experiments. The possibility to use the physical features as indicators to “see” or observe the processes that happens on micro level – the level where the chemical reaction happens – are not highlighted by the teacher in the classroom communication or in the instructions (se e.g. Goodwin, 1997). During lessons with a more theoretical content the teacher explain what happens on the micro level but the references to the experiment are weak. In order to help the students to understand the processes on micro level the teacher uses the symbolic language of chemistry but with only few connections to the experiments and the students’ observation.