Background: Creativity is an important skill for the future society and developing students’ creativity is an important part of science education. Working on a creative science project may help developing students’ creative abilities, and the interaction between teacher and students during the work on defining a problem and solving the problem, is an ideal forum for supporting students’ creativity. Purpose: The purpose of the study is to get insight into how teachers respond to students’ creative ideas during the works on a creative science project, and how the interaction between teacher and students may support or inhibit students’ creative abilities. Design and methods: Data in this study consist of 49 video-recorded interactions between two teachers and student groups working on a science project with the aim of supporting students’ creative abilities. The interactions were analyzed with the use of Conversation Analysis (CA). Results: Analysis shows that teachers play an important role in developing students’ creative ideas. The analysis shows how teachers, after being told the students’ creative ideas, evaluates the students’ ideas as either preferred or dis-preferred according to the teacher’s own preference. The teachers’ evaluative stance towards the students’ creative ideas determines how the conversations with the students unfold and make explicit which ideas the students should work further within the project. Conclusion: Controlling the conversation based on the teacher’s own preference may lead to missed opportunities regarding converting students’ mini-c creative ideas into little-c creative ideas. Being able to create time and opportunity to explore and develop students’ ideas, there is a need for fewer students per teacher and more focus on the process aspect of creativity rather than the product aspect.

This study examines how students in primary school (grades five and six) displayed creative thinking while working on an open-ended science project, and how they included science knowledge during the creative process. The findings show that students approached the creative process in six different ways: (1) by adaptation, (2) by transfer, (3) by synthesis, (4) by originality, (5) by practicality, and (6) by need. Students were able to make use of knowledge from the science domain while adapting throughout the creative process. Transfer of knowledge from other domains, synthesis of different types of ideas and knowledge, and originality were mostly used during the exploratory phase. Evaluating ideas based on their value according to the contextual factors of the project was also based on the approach’s practicality and need. There was evidence to suggest that some students showed signs of higher order evaluative and creative thinking, based on the way they were able to combine different types of knowledge, make associations between, often remote ideas and knowledge, and make use of knowledge in new ways related to their level of knowledge and experience. The result shows that science education can focus on nurturing creativity without minimising subject knowledge in the process.

There is increasing recognition of the need to integrate sustainability education (SE) into school curricula, and assessments such as PISA 2025 emphasise the importance of pupils’ ability to apply sustainability knowledge in authentic contexts. Because sustain-ability issues require social, environmental, and economic perspectives, transdisciplinary real-world approaches are recommended. However, many teachers find SE challenging, and initial teacher education (ITE) students often feel unprepared. This study investigates how a transdisciplinary approach can prepare students for sustainability teaching. Fifty-four fourth-year students participated in a two-week transdisciplinary sustainability project. Working in groups, they explored a self-selected local sustainability issue, engaged with community actors, and proposed solutions. The data consist of individual reflection notes describing how the project supported their understanding of transdisciplinarity, authenticity, subject integration, and teacher preparedness, which were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. Findings indicate that the project strengthened students’ preparedness for sustainability teaching and, through transdisciplinary approaches, offered a concrete model of best practice for SE. Engagement with authentic, local issues fostered emotional involvement, relevance, and deeper understanding, while collaborative work enhanced insight into distinct disciplinary perspectives on SE. Students further emphasised the need for clear subject expectations and strong pedagogical framing.

This study explores changes in university students’ understanding of plastic-related environmental challenges and sustainability competencies following internships. Using a qualitative pre-post design, we analysed questionnaire responses from 16 students who completed six-week internships in Norwegian companies working with plastic challenges. Thematic analysis showed changes in knowledge related to environmental, societal, and economic impacts of marine plastics, and potential solutions and challenges. We identified changes in expressed knowledge related to disciplinary, critical and normative, creative and strategic, systems, and interpersonal and communication competencies. Students primarily demonstrated practice-oriented knowledge, such as familiarity with technologies, sustainability principles and stakeholder engagement, while reflective, ethical, and global dimensions remained less evident in students’ responses. These findings suggest that real-world learning may support the development of applied knowledge and professional skills, while underscoring the need for integrating internships with academic reflection to support competence-related knowledge concerning systemic sustainability challenges. Engagement with authentic sustainability challenges was associated with increased expression of scientific knowledge aligned with scientific literacy, suggesting that internships may serve as learning experiences associated with sustainability competencies. We argue that higher education institutions should strengthen experiential learning and industry collaboration to link theory and practice and prepare students to contribute to sustainability work in practice.