Abstract This article presents comparisons concerned with secondary school science teachers’ and their students’
beliefs about science and technology and also what science content secondary science teachers
teach and what their students want to learn. Student data are part of the Relevance of Science Education
(ROSE) study and the teacher data are part of an extensive study carried out only in Sweden. The
results indicate that both secondary science teachers and their students are optimistic about science
and technology as essential parts of societal development. When content from these knowledge fields
is considered for instruction, significant disparities exist between what teachers teach and what their
students want to learn. Additional results concerning the secondary science teachers’ beliefs, ‘out-ofschool
experiences’, ‘Science Technology and Society’ (STS) approaches and ‘inquiry-based instruction’
are pointed out as important for the development of science instruction in secondary schools. The
results are discussed in the contexts of students’ voices and teachers’ beliefs.