This paper is framed within a four-year comparative research project funded by the Swedish Research Council, aiming at comparing chemistry teaching in Swedish and Finland-Swedish classrooms (Eriksson, ed. 2011, Eriksson et al. 2011). Basis for the project was related to PISA-results from 2003 that firstly show that Finnish students performed significantly better than did the Swedish students, secondly that Finland-Swedish students (Finland is a bilingual country) performed significantly poorer than did Finnish students, but significantly better than students in Sweden. Until 2006, most Finland-Swedish schools used science textbooks produced in Sweden but related to the Swedish curriculum. One of the major issues of the project was therefore related to various aspects of teachers’ classroom work.

In this paper, we will particularly focus on the results from one of the sub-studies, aiming at discerning and describing similarities and differences in teaching practices in four Finland-Swedish and three Swedish chemistry classrooms. This paper takes the three teaching practices that were the results of this sub-study, as it’s point of departure. The issue for this paper is to further elaborate one of them, mainly found in a Swedish classroom. By more detailed descriptions of the specific features of the interaction between teacher and students we intend to illuminate how the societal chemistry that was made available for these students was collaboratively established in the classroom.

The sub-study was framed within an activity theoretical perspective (Leont’iev 1978). Therefore 'a teaching practice’ is defined as the cluster of actions that analytically can be discerned in data, and that aim at a specific goal – something the teachers are trying to achieve. Teaching as an activity can thereby consist of several culturally and historically developed teaching practices that aim at different goals. Another point of departure for our study is Stiegler and Hiebart‘s (1999) definition of teaching as a cultural activity. This is important for the comparative aspect of our study. We assume that what is regarded as important knowing and how the content is treated and constituted in the classroom differ between cultures. 

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