Ola Nordqvist
Educational Developer
Department of Biological & Environmental SciencesAbout Ola Nordqvist
As an educational developer at the Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences, one of my main responsibilities is to teach prospective upper-secondary biology teachers in subject didactics and methodology, supervise their degree projects, and serve as course coordinator for school placement (VFU) courses within the teacher education programme. Within the subject teacher programme, I also serve as subject coordinator for biology, representative in the VFU Focus Group, and representative in the VFU Collaboration Committee for both the subject teacher programme and the Swedish one-year teacher qualification programme (KPU). In addition to these duties, I teach courses in higher education pedagogy, work with pedagogical and didactic development of courses within the department, and support the department’s teachers in their professional pedagogical development.
In parallel with these teaching-related assignments, I also supervise two CUL doctoral students: Helen Ekvall (principal supervisor) and Charlotte Lennartsdotter (assistant supervisor). Helen is an industrial PhD student in collaboration between the Gothenburg Botanical Garden and the Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences, and her dissertation work focuses on evaluating the effects of an educational outreach project (“Så Vilda!”) on children’s perceptions of biodiversity. Charlotte is a full-time doctoral student at the same department, and her research concerns subject-specific literacy among students and biology teachers in lower secondary school.
I have a background as a long-serving upper-secondary teacher, primarily in chemistry, biology, and biotechnology. Most of my teaching experience comes from a secondary school in Gothenburg, although I also taught for several years at a high school in Iowa, USA. In 2022, I completed my PhD within the CUL graduate school in biology with a specialization in educational science. My research focused on how personal values and ethical/moral considerations influence biology teaching at the upper-secondary level.