The Anthropocene is an era characterized by existential ruptures to life as we know it, including climate change, biodiversity loss, and breached planetary boundaries. The important role of education in meeting these challenges has been highlighted by scholars (White et al., 2022), and it is argued that we need to rethink education for a sustainable future.

In Science education, several scholars argue for new visions of scientific literacy, such as scientific literacy for change-making and transformative action (Mueller et al., 2022; Tasquier et al., 2022). When students are learning to read, write, and talk science, they are also learning to think in a scientific way; they are being encultured into the culture of science (Knain, 2014). This is because the scientific language has evolved to structure texts documenting the scientist's worldview (Halliday, 2003). The scientific language is characterized by high lexical density, use of passive voice, high use of technical and academic language, and the use of nominalizations (Osborne, 2023). This contributes to making the language effective and packed with information. However, this language can also contribute to obscure agency, such as when the process of cutting down trees is described as deforestation (Osborne, 2023). Another example of how scientific language can obscure agency was given in Knain’s (2001a) analysis of the Norwegian curriculum decades ago. Here, he showed how the description of the environmental destruction resulting from the use of DDT was described in a way that DDT, and not humans, was presented as the actor who harmed life: DDT, which killed pests and limited diseases, accumulated in the food chain and harmed life at many levels unintentionally. Knain (2001a) argues that the discourse appears to have a preserving effect. Ecolinguistics is a field that uses linguistic analysis to reveal the underlying stories, or ideologies, we live by, questions the stories that are destructive, and then tries to come up with new stories (Stibbe, 2015).

Science education has been criticized for being fact-oriented, avoiding normative issues, which would rather be addressed in other subjects (Bostad & Hessen, 2019; Kvamme, Reiss, 1999). Values are an important part of education for sustainable development, but in science curricula, textbooks, and classrooms, normative and value-laden issues are often avoided to present an image of science as objective (Knain, 2001b). Bostad and Hessen (2019) argue for the importance of balancing fact-based science and ecology education with an education that fosters an emotional connection with nature.  In a supporting document to the science PISA framework (White et al., 2022), it is highlighted that we need to rethink our relationship with nature and other species by adopting an ecocentric worldview that sees humans as an integral part of the environment rather than separate from it.

This paper focuses on The Salmon Project, a 13-week interdisciplinary open schooling intervention co-created by teachers and researchers. Through classroom instruction and field trips to the salmon spawning site, the students engaged deeply with the lifecycle of salmon. The teaching intervention had a narrative approach, in which the students, throughout the whole period of the project, worked on developing a film script about the salmon life cycle. Focusing on students’ film, we have done a qualitative discourse analysis partly based on the framework of functional grammar (Halliday, 2003) and a social semiotic analysis based on Kress & Van Leeuwen’s framework (2006).

Research questions:

1. How do the students negotiate different ideologies about the salmon, humans, and nature?
2. What expressions of students’ agency can be identified in the student’s language use in the film?

The presented study focuses on a case study that was a part of the larger EU-funded Horizon 2020 project Science Education for Action and Engagement towards Sustainability (SEAS). SEAS established, coordinated, and evaluated collaboration among six open schooling networks in seven European countries. Open schooling is an innovative approach to education that bridges school and society to approach socio-ecological challenges collaboratively. The aim with the analysis is to gain insight into how a narrative approach to a science-related theme in an interdisciplinary open schooling intervention can contribute to fruitful negotiation of values, perspectives, and emotional connectedness to nature. How can education change the stories we live by? (Stibbe, 2015). We are also interested in how students' agency can be investigated through discourse analysis. According to Halliday (2003), language is a social semiotic system where functional grammar is seen as a resource for meaning-making. Kress & Van Leeuwen (2006) further developed this framework also to include multimodal representations. By studying the metafunctions of language and students’ semiotic choices, it is also possible to get insight into how they negotiate implicit ideologies. Further, language use can be an expression of agency. In our analysis of the text, we focus particularly on the use of nominalizations, modality, and the kind of processes in focus (material, mental, relational, existential). In the analysis of the film, we also focus what processes in focus and on perspective and modality. The notion of coding orientation is relevant in investigating modality. For instance, in scientific discourse, there is a high use of abstract representation, such as graphs and diagrams, and less use of realistic pictures. In a scientific coding orientation, therefore, diagrams and abstracted representations can have higher modality than pictures. In everyday discourse, on the other hand, realistic pictures and movies can have high modality as they show reality. They can often be used to trigger emotions and perspectives.

Our analysis shows that the students’ text had characteristics of scientific discourse with a high focus on material processes. This is not surprising as it focuses on the life-cycle of salmon. The language contains many nominalizations, such as spawning and migration. However, this scientific discourse was blended with a more direct and confronting discourse towards human actions. For instance: “Every year humans dump 8 million tons of plastic and waste into the ocean” points very clearly toward human actions and thereby serves as a contrast to typical science discourse, which has been criticized for obscuring human responsibilities (Osborne, 2023). This message is strengthened by a realistic picture of a river full of waste. We argue that this language use, combining scientific discourse with a discourse focusing more on humans responsibilities is an expression of agency. Learning science is about learning the language of science (Osborne, 2023). However, in order to change science education, as called for by scholars (White et al., 2022), we also need to use language in new ways to invent new stories about our relationship with nature. Our analysis of the film scripts and the movie shows that the students negotiated different ideologies about salmon, humans, and nature: Salmon as a victim, salmon as a superhero, salmon as food, salmon as a part of populations and ecosystems, and salmon as a product/business. These negotiations can be seen as a way to rethink our relationship with nature and other species (White et al., 2022). Bostad and Hessen (2019) suggest that deep ecology can serve a bridge-building function between the more fact-based ecology and normative questions and emotions. Our analysis revealed that the salmon project, as an open schooling intervention expressed through students' film scripts, blended the more scientific ecological perspective with a more emotional and normative perspective.

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