So far, we can see that students at senior level appreciate working with SSI. Thus, working with SSI could
be considered as an appropriate activity for all students. However, the work with SSI might not so much raise
students’ interests in science, but it can strengthen generic skills as team-work, problem-solving and media
literacy. We notice that students are ill-prepared to work autonomously. The teachers in this study confirmed
that students are interested in working with SSI. Some of the results are contradictory. The teachers felt safe
with contents and work forms, but they still arranged SSI as something special and were comfortable with
group work, even if they generally did not seem to know how to facilitate the students’ work. The results
indicate that teachers lack strategies to work with discussions and argumentation. Despite of information from
the researchers on aims and work forms for SSIs, the teachers observed in the qualitative study tended to fall
into old habits, e.g., science contents are the primary learning goal and their roles are dispensers of knowledge
(Ratcliffe et al., 2005) and supervisors. Results suggested that although all categories contributed, SSI work
forms are more important than personal factors for explaining outcomes. Relevant (current) issues, autonomy
and functioning group work (good discussion climate and equally distributed workload) seem to be important
aspects of successful SSI work.Structure provided by the teacher, and information that challenges previous
knowledge also seems to be aspects of SSI work that contributes to positive affective and cognitive outcomes.
In general, SSI seems to be most efficient for students who believe they learn from presenting and discussing
their knowledge, focus on “the large picture”, acknowledge own responsibility for learning, find school science
personally relevant and are self-efficacious (data not shown). It seems that the outcomes from SSI work are
much in the hands of the teacher. Thus, working with SSI could be considered as an appropriate activity for all
students. However, educators should continue to look for ways to promote development of students’ attitudes
and epistemological beliefs.